stopping down a softbox?

[filmat11]

why has no one said scrims or diffusion... (assuming for some reason you cant move it back) Thats the first thing I would do.

It was my first thought, but depending on which light you use, which softbox you use and how you attach the softbox to the light..ie-speed ring... there may not be room to add wire scrims to the ears of the light because the speed ring has taken the mounting position which they may need to rest in.
Some lights provide extra room and space to add scrims when the softbox is held in place by the ears (where the barndoors rest), others do not.
Nets, flags, ....dimmers -(which change color temp) can all" knock down" a softbox. Chimera softbox's usually come with different fabrics of different densities, so you can control the softbox output and amount of diffusion.

 

[dlang]

Dimmers in my opinion seem to be kind of a bad habbit to get into when Lighting a subject. It's too easy to use nets or throw some ND gel that will give you the control your looking for without color temp shift. I used to use dimmers all the time but found that I always ended up warming up the picture too much...You can re white balance to the dimmed light but then your running the risk of throwing all the other light sources color temp off. So anyhow to have better control overall use nets or ND.