First, why in the world has no one done this before now? Show of hands – who has not grappled with putting together a softbox and regretted every second of it? No one? I didn’t think so. 1 x 4 strip, anyone? Oh yeaaah! Just too much fun.

So it took a while, but Profoto has now created brand new softboxes that open instantly with no hassle. And these are no mediocre quality softboxes, everything about them feels totally solid and worthy of the Profoto name. So to get started, there are 3 new softboxes that are made with the instant open fashion – 2′ x 3′, 3′ Octa, and 1′ x 4′ strip (Yes!!).

One thing though – these are just called Profoto Softbox. The name gives no indication that this softbox is any different than the past, just a basic softbox. Why is this? Because Profoto wants this new softbox to become the standard softbox for them. They’ll still offer the Clic softboxes for on-camera lighting, but for off-camera lighting, these new softboxes will replace nearly all others (some outliers may remain, like a 4′ x 6′ RFI softbox; it’s not known whether they can produce an instant open version of that model). This is a bit … odd that such a revolutionary and beneficial change to the softbox would bear no indication of such in the name and identification of the product. But … ok, we’ll let that slide. We’re excited about this new product, which we already have in stock!

We asked Bee from the CI Team to give her best shot at setting up both the old and new iterations of the Profoto Softbox. She put in her best effort to get them up as fast as she could. The difference is shocking. Check it out in the video below!