Of (Christmas) balls and 3D

I have finally in my possession a reflective ball. It's something that I have been looking for here in the UAE for months now. I have almost given up hope of trying out mental ray's production shader with my own background and reflection images. A good friend (Hey, Glyndon I hope you can read this) told me to wait for Christmas and true enough Carrefour is now selling decors for Christmas and I bought two pieces at City Centre for 2.50 Dirhams only. I know I won't be able to obtain perfect reflections from a cheap 7 centimeters diameter Christmas ball but it IS perfect for a simple scene practice. 

The Christmas balls.

Last night I asked my brother to take some pictures of it for some nice enviroment reflections with his new Panasonic Lumix ZS3. The background is their room. I rendered it using some models I got from the net but it is a bit rough and not quite convincing. The shadows are not as soft as they should be. A little tweak of the area light parameters should probably soften the shadows. Tonight I'll render another one and maybe take new background images and reflections from different places.

Here's the background plate. Click to enlarge.

EDIT:

Rendered the scene again last night and adjusted what needs adjustment and got what I think is the correct lighting and shadows for the scene. The actual room, by the way, has two fluorescent lights but the shadows are not suppose to be like those on the first render. Anyway, here is the finished render with the appropriate soft shadows.