My glass sphere is now firmly lodged in my everyday camera kit (or more accurately, whilst I'm out and about, in my pocket). Frankly it's quite addictive balancing it and peering through it, angling the camera up and down, and trying to line up horizons.
I've definitely developed a preference for balancing the sphere on something, rather than holding it (maybe due to the less-than-perfect appearance of my own hands), and I've carried out a social media poll regarding whether to flip the final image or not - what do you think?
<--This way up (as taken) or...
This way up (flipped afterwards)-->
I had generally been stubbornly NOT rotating the photos (to make your brain do the work as it should/because the image in the sphere is sub-par quality owing to the glass imperfections). The poll results were basically a majority in favour of flipping the image if it was cropped down to pretty much just the sphere, but that if I'd decided to keep a decent amount of background in the shot (for whatever reason), it was permissable (but not necessarily preferable) to maintain its original way-up. As follows:
In summary - go and get yourself a glass sphere, you'll not regret it. Experiment away! I'm saving the pennies for a better quality sphere (to eliminate the issues I have when flipping the image and thereby emphasizing the image presented within the sphere), and in celebration I have added a new "Spherocification" page to the website! Click to go there and find inspiration: