I jury rigged a faux-soft box with two light stands, a $10 dome lightbulb housing and a $40 "Lite-disk" circular diffuser. The whole deal cost me under $100 and works fine.

That said, I always end up just using natural light when I do photo shoots.

I like my Panasonic 3-chip camera (one chip for each spectrum) with its spectacular Leica Dicomar lens. It really sees the color. For a movie/still combo, it really gets the job done. I bought two of them for TV filming. It is only 4 megs, but the color and lens really do the trick.