Where can you buy that mirrorball ??
 

I want to get myself such a mirror ball, so I can take pictures for HDRi myself, but I can't find any info on where I get buy such a thing ..

ebay has a crap load. They are used as garden decorating things. So I think it is called a gazing ball or something. They can be up to a foot long. Another thing you can use is those mirrors that grocery stores have to make sure people are stealing around a corner. good luck

LOL wtf.. do people actually have those in their gardens ?? I have never seen anything as corny as that .. LOL ..

Thanks alot .. I found a shitload of links on google by searching for Gazing ball ..

I have never seen that crap until I started searching for it myself. Its got to be the most ugly garden piece ever. I orefer having pink flamingos on my garden!

Hehe, do you have a pics of these gazing balls? :)

Btw, I've used a chrome soup spoon but it's a bit small ;)

Its crazy, what appeal does this have?

http://www.ology.org/albums/Frederic...the%20barn.jpg

That's why you need a good dslr with a 1:1 macro lens...nikon DSLR with the 60mm micro nikkor rocks!

Well, I have ordered a 3" sphere from huge a ball-bearing, from SKF in denmark.

After reading a bit more on the subject, I realised that the gazing balls dont give the perfect reflections, since the stainless steel ones is supposedly to have tiny ripples from production in them, which equal non-perfect reflections.

And the glass ones break easily and have an extra set of reflections from the glass that covers the ball.

Ohh and they are not 100% spherical.

But the ball bearings are. So now im just waiting for my brother in law to go and pick it up for me.

The price for a 3" chrome solid stainless steel ball bearing is 13$ +25% Danish VAT = 115 DKr. That is like 1/4 the price of a gazing ball.

I am also waiting for my new digital camera (havn't bought it yet, still in the stages of getting accept from the wife :) ), but I am going for a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3, with Anti shake, macro funtions, 12x Optical Zoom and 4x Digital zoom (who cares about digital zoom, Photoshop makes it prettier anyway hehe) - It is ugly like hell, but it is probarbly the best digicam you can get at that price.

If any danes need the adress to where I bought the mirrorball, then throw me a private message, I have phone numbers, adress, item number and stuff you can get from me.

Anyway, Thanks alot for your help guys.

Nice. Though 3" might be small. Were there any larger? Price?

With a small ball the problem is that you need to take the pictures pretty close to the ball unless you have a very good tele-lens. Shooting at close range means that you and the camera will appear quite large in the reflection. There are methods on removing the photographer from the images but it isn't as easy as it sounds (basically you shoot two sets of images in 90 degree angle)...

Lol. Maybe it's for preventing the alien invasion from outer space ;)

LOL Kbrown!!

hahahah ..

Roach : The 3" was the one used by the guys who made the cathredral probes at HDRshop ..

You can use a camera stand to remove the man :P

And hey .. I got my new camera today.. so I can take pictures pretty close up .. Look at this attachment.

Distance from camera to the object was around 1 cm !!

It looks kind of CG, but it is a photo.

Yeah I never thought of that....how DO you remove the reflection of the photographer or camera or tripod?

In HDRshop you can assemple the image from multiple shots.. or if you use at tripod then the refelction will be so small that it wont matter much, not if you use the HDR image for lighting purpose only..

I can see that you have to remove the man if you use it as reflection aswell ..

I have the little chinese therapy balls. I think this is what they are called. Its about 2 - 3 inches and makes some funny sounds when you rub two them together. Anyways I on have a canon a70 camera. had a very difficult time getting all the exposure levels identical. Not sure if it was me or my cheap tripod.