To crack or not to crack?

All CFLs. During the day I can get some natural light through the windows but the time of day there's enough light, I'm usually at work. Walls are all white (or slightly off-white). The flash always just washes out the coins if it's as close to the coin as the camera lens, so that's just not an option. Reflective surfaces never come out well when a flash is used, especially silver coins, and ESPECIALLY proofs.

My camera is showing the details of a coin well, when not trying to take a picture through a slab. I'm just annoyed that the color I see with my eyes is not the same color that shows up in the picture, especially when the color or luster is needed to get any informed opinions on the grade. I've tried putting coins directly on the scanner, and that shows the detail great, but is terrible at showing the color and if there's any reflective surfaces the color comes out very weird.

I have a reasonably bright LED lamp and can try playing around with that. I want to somehow get bright light on the coin, but indirectly so it doesn't reflect it right back in the camera and overexpose the picture. I'll try playing around with some pocket change to see what works. I have a lot of experience in photography but coins are proving to be a difficult subject to capture lol... don't have this problem with paper money, that I can put right on my flatbed scanner and they show up perfectly.

 

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Bought this trade dollar already slabbed lol... it was details anyway, but I just wanted the assurance that this was real, as it's faked often, especially on eBay. Saw no reason to keep it slabbed if I never intended on selling it again.

But yeah, I wouldn't break coins out of a slab if i had them slabbed myself, because then the entire grading fee is down the drain. Get a good look at your coin to see if it will get "details" before you submit it. Unless it's rare and/or at risk of being faked AND you intend on selling it, I wouldn't bother to have it slabbed in such a condition. (I once thought it would be amusing to submit a badly fingerprinted impaired clad proof half dollar but eventually decided the grading fee wasn't worth it for sake of a private joke lol...)