Roland W Offline Upload & Sell: On
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You did not mention if you were using a Speedlight flash, or studio strobes. If you are shooting with a studio strobe that has its flash tube area projecting forward from the body, a good soft box with its correct inner diffuser and its main front diffuser is going to give you nice uniform diffuse light, as good as or better than a shoot through umbrella. Classic studio strobes have the flash tube area projecting forward, which puts the light at the focus of the soft box or other modifier, and makes their optical design work just right.
If you want to consider a medium or large rectangular soft box, look at the Photoflex brand, which can easily be adapted to most any studio strobe with the right speed ring. Photoflex also sells grids and masks for their boxes, including a strip style mask that would give you a strip type effect, or you can mask the front your self with foam core board and some gaffer tape. Masking is easy with the flat board attached to the flat front. And of course when you are past the strip need, you end up with a very good general purpose soft box that can give very uniform light.
If you want to use a shoot through umbrella, you will need to carefully mask the light in some way to get your rectangular light source effect, but it will take extra work to hold the mask where you want it, because the shoot through umbrella is not flat on the front. Black foam core board held by something else and a bunch of time can work, but if you change the setup, or want to recreated a type of setup again at a later date, the time will be required again.
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