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Lensball in an optical tube

Started Sep 18, 2018 | Discussions thread
ProfHankD
ProfHankD Veteran Member • Posts: 9,147
Re: A 3D-Printed Ball Lens Mount
1

Trebor1 wrote:

Maybe you need bigger balls? It appears there are a number of higher quality K9 (Borosilicate crown glass) balls from various suppliers, in the 60mm-120mm diameter range. There is even one available from Rollei, for additional kudos/poseur value but the original (Chinese) manufacturer may well be the same?

https://www.rollei.com/products/photo-accessories/lensballs/

I got an 80mm one at the same time. It weighs a ton.

The main advantage to a bigger ball is that the optical defects are MUCH smaller relative to the size of the ball. The disadvantages are:

  • It isn't cute. It's just too big and heavy.
  • Cost. The 80mm cost me $14 -- and that was a very low price for that size. The Rollei balls look really good, and they start at 60mm for 30eu.
  • DoF/FoV issues are still there.

Ball lenses have been used to obtain the same point of view with multiple cameras for perfect stitching of a wider view -- here's perhaps the best known example -- and I really got the 80mm to try for a variant of that. It would be as an alternative to FourSee , a camera which my research group built for Time Domain Continuous Imaging .

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