The idea of taking a photograph of someone's thought has always intrigued magicians, and audiences.  There have been methods (back in the old days) using specially prepared film in the Polaroid Instamatic cameras.  The Instamatics were well-suited to the effect, because they gave an instant picture back in the era of waiting a week for your film to be developed.  but with the advent of digital photography, and now instant photos on everyone's phone, new methods of doing the "thought photo" trick arose.  Photomental is an easy way to make a thought of card appear on a photo that is taken with the spectator's own phone.

It looks like this:  magi shows a special thought condenser sheet, which is a piece of see-through plastic about the size of a playing card.  The sheet can be examined and then it is set on the table.  A card is chosen from an ordinary deck, and the spectator locks it into her mind.  Now you borrow her phone, and hand her the (see-through) thought condenser sheet, which she holds up near her face.  You take a picture of her with her phone, and then hand her the phone as you take back the condenser sheet and place it on the table.  She looks at the photo you took of here, and she sees (captured in the condenser) the very card she was thinking of.   The thought condenser sheet can again be examined.

The working of this effect is not complicated, and as you can tell from the picture, there is a switch of one sheet for another, but this is covered by lots of misdirection and a deck of cards.  The sheets are much like the Masuda WOW sheets, but without the frame around them.   Ton Onosaka also has a few effects utilizing the same principle of disguise.

You get three sheets -- one ungimmicked and two showing different cards, so you can repeat the trick later for the same audience if you wish.

A very practical way to get thoughts on film... well, not on film anymore, but on someone's camera, and probably on their Instagram page with the story about how the magician took a picture of what they were thinking!

Got a few more of these at a closeout price, so our excellent TMGS price just got better!   But when the current stock is sold, it's all gone...  so get one now!

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