You're right, P'Cola. Moving the lights to and fro will change the f/stop as well as the shadows and highlights.
Seneca, experiment with something small, shiny and round: An apple or billiard ball, for instance. Move your light in close, set the exposure and take a snap. Next, move it back as far as you can and do the same. Then compare the images with each other.
As an extreme example: You can place a twelve-inch by twelve-inch soft box one foot from your shiny, round subject, and you'll see that the highlights and shadows are large, soft and pleasing. But, the six-foot by eight-foot window ten feet behind you (the one with the diaphanous curtains that turn it into a huge soft box) shows up as a small, bright generally window-shaped specular. Yes, on a shiny object, any light from across the room that reaches the subject, even when over-powered by the strobes (window light at, say, f/5.6 and strobes at f/16), will reflect back as a specular highlight, and will often be amazingly identifiable.
Another, slightly less expensive method for controling highlights and shadows is to use reflectors and umbrellas of different sizes. Assuming both are at the same power setting and distance from the subject, the smaller, of course, will give smaller reflections and more defined shadows, and provide for smaller a aperature. Larger will do the opposite.
Aperture size will also affect reflection size (shadow, not so much). But, that's another atory for another time.
