Decided on the way home tonight to have a second attempt at some dark field lighting. Time was at a premium, so rather than mess around trying to put together something wonderful with glasses, decanters etc I grabbed a handy glass paperweight.
The principal of dark-field lighting is to have a transparent object on a black background, and light only the edges of the object to define it. This is because if you light from the front, you either light everything (including the background) and still can’t see your subject, or (likely with glass) end up with the subject reflecting the light back and not being able to see any detail. I understand you can also use this approach with glossy objects, but I’ve not tried it.
In practice, what this means is putting the subject on a black background (here it was a piece of black card) and then firing a flash from behind the paper directed at the paper. Through the wonders of physics this has lit the edges (including the inscription) but not the rest of the faces.
This one isn’t perfect (by a long stretch), not least because of the blemish under the ‘O’ of ’soul’ – I think this was a fingerprint that I missed when polishing it – but I’m quite pleased with it as a proof of concept.
