During the past few years camera equipment makers have come out with a variety of creative and useful accessories for the DSLR user. Many of these have been designed to improve the quality of flash photography and with good reason. Improving the quality of your light will do more to improve the quality of your photography than almost anything else.
Studio photographers have long relied on soft boxes to help produce a softer, more diffuse light for their images. At times, a number of products have tried to provide similar capabilities for the portable shoe mount flash. Back in the seventies I remember buying an inflatable balloon type diffuser that strapped to the front of the strobe. My Navy buddies and I used to joke about it being a life preserver for our cameras. Then I discovered the Westcott Micro Apollo Light Modifier. This small softbox did as nice job of improving the light from an on-camera flash as could be expected, but still, it was small, and the flash was still on camera.
As time went by other companies also offered soft box like attachments for on camera flash. Then the off camera revolution began to take place. Photographers discovered that thanks to wireless triggering systems, they could greatly improve their lighting by moving the strobes off camera and finding different ways to soften and diffuse the light. A variety of innovative shooters began experimenting with multiple light setups and strobes mounted on light stands and fired into umbrellas or snoots or other light modifiers.
