Rollei Lensball 60 mm (smartphones)

60 mm glass ball for Smartphone photography - Rollei Lens Balls
Glass balls for photography, also called lens balls are streak-free solid glass spheres of the highest quality, without air pockets or bubbles. They reflect their environment as an inverted mirror image, a sharp crystal-clear 180-degree view in a sphere, which can be recorded directly from the palm of one’s hand or else can be placed in a fixed position. This 60-mm glass ball is specifically intended for Smartphone photography, but can also be used gladly with a mini-stand or a table stand.

The clear, transparent photo glass ball is simple to use, but also meets the requirements of professional photographers. With a weight of 263 g, it can be comfortably stowed away in any bag or any rucksack and also taken with you on photography outings on the landscape or on your trips. It doesn’t matter whether you use it for landscape photography, city tours or architectural photographs - with the 60-mm glass ball you can create singularly surreal pictures from unique perspectives. And you can do that, without great effort.

Production & quality control of the 60-mm solid glass ball
Photography with a glass ball benefits above all from the effect that it captures the environment in the form of an inverted mirror image as a 180-degree view in a tiny space. The 60-mm solid glass ball is particularly suitable for photography with Smartphones. In addition it is also possible with a camera + lens (ideally: 2.8 / focal length of 24 – 35 mm) to focus on the subject in the glass sphere and to work on it with a low depth of field but nevertheless to artistically incorporate the background into the picture.

The glass must be manufactured to the highest quality standard andmust have no inclusions so that all of this is possible. Our special quality control and the transparent manufacturing process, whereby the balls are already checked several times during production for material defects, inclusions and cracks, ensure that.

First of all, the glass is melted into a long rectangle. High temperatures make the glass soft and easily malleable. Subsequently, individual cuboids are cut out from this glass rectangle. Due to the prior fusion process, these cuboids are still easily malleable and are now put into a hydraulic press and thus their spherical shape is formed. Now it’s about cooling down to an ambient temperature of approx. 20 degrees Celsius. In order to avoid imperfections in the process such as irregularities of the surface or bubbles, the glass balls are cooled down very slowly and stored temporarily for this purpose. After the cooling process, the first examination of the raw material for cracks & inclusions is carried out. All solid glass balls that are of flawless quality, now go to be ground and polished, until they attain their absolutely immaculate spherical form. Then the next inspection for air pockets and other defects is performed. If any defect becomes apparent at this juncture, the glass ball will be discarded. Now the final finish is applied by a high-speed polishing machine. After a certain time the balls are now completely transparent and of a perfect surface quality. Now the final quality control is performed – until every glass ball has a perfect result. It is only in this way that it can be ensured that the glass ball does not have any negative effect later on the refraction of light, or that no inclusions and scratches emerge as disturbing elements in your reflected subject.