If you had to choose a single light shaping tool, you might do well to pick the Impact 7' Improved Parabolic Umbrella with a black exterior and a white interior. First of all, it's a huge broad light source that wraps light around your subject, yielding clean highlights and rich open shadows. But due to the special shape of the umbrella there's a unique mix of soft enveloping light with the kind of crisp detail you only get from reflectors. Put another way, if you combined a beauty dish with a softbox, you'd have a parabolic umbrella.

This umbrella has a unique structural design as well. Instead of bendable metal, the 16 inner ribs are made of durable fiberglass. The fixed black backing ensures that all of the light output is bounced back on your subject instead of through the umbrella. You can also vary the light-to-umbrella distance along the shaft for a harder or softer look, or for longer throw capability. In addition, an optional diffuser is available for this umbrella, which effectively converts it to a large softbox with just a 1/2 stop loss of output.

The umbrella features an improved finger-friendly locking mechanism for secure and fast set up and break down.