Bal-tec™ Home Mirror Balls
Mirror Balls — Photo Ball
Wide Angle Spherical Mirror Video Mirror for Wide Angle Photography
Mirror balls with approximately 97% reflectivity are available for shooting extremely wide angle photos. These balls are produced in four and one half inch ( 4.5”, 114mm) diameter. This diameter has been found ideal over many years of trials by some of the world’s top cinematic photographers. Balls as small as two inches ( 2”, 50mm ) diameter have been used with some success when cost is crucial.
They are machined, ground, precision lapped and finally polished to unheard of levels of accuracy. These balls are produced from 316 austenitic stainless steel, which is one of the most corrosion resistant materials commercially available. This diameter was chosen because it provides an adequate aperture for even large format cameras. The weight of this ball is still low enough that it can be handled without assistance by a single person.
These balls are provided with a threaded hole to mount it by. The two most common threads are a one quarter inch diameter with twenty threads per inch or an M10x1.5 metric thread which is about three eights of an inch diameter. A felt lined plywood case can be supplied. The ball is wrapped in multiple layers of flannel and lowered into the felt lined case. If the ball gets scuffed or scratched during use, it can be re-lapped and polished for about one half the cost of the original ball.
