Fun look at the Grand Canyon, past and present.

Posted by Kurt on December 31, 2011 in Images Jottings

I have a couple of neat images to share from the Grand Canyon, one taken almost 112 years ago, the other from about two years ago.

Both pictures were taken in the vicinity of Bright Angel hotel/lodge on the south rim, looking over Plateau Point (where trails are in lower left of color shot) and out to Bright Angel canyon past Zoroaster Temple on the middle-right.

The old B&W image from c1900 was taken by an 8×10″ view camera, (silver gelatin glass transparency); the new one with a Sony A900 and CZ 24-70mm lens. Both images were cropped by about a third, so I could match up the view more precisely. For some reason, I used ISO 400 and saved the file to jpeg on the A900, not sure why. That does degrade the quality somewhat. However, the A900 shot had a slight advantage overall as the field of view was less, meaning it was ‘zoomed in’ more.

Obviously, there are lighting differences here that can effect the perception of details, so this isn’t meant to be a scientific study. The B&W was taken with the sun high in the sky, the color one close to sunset. If you zoom around on the full size shots you can see areas were the old camera is pulling significantly better detail, like the center canyon, and on the lower right side the A900 is much sharper, and that’s the side I didn’t touch when cropping. Check out the light/white colored boulders around the lower right side, most are in the same place well over a hundred years later! You’d think with rain and erosion they would roll around and/or split apart after so many years.

The old B&W image is from the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Photograph collection.

Specs for the A900 shot; CZ 24-70mm F/2.8 SSM lens, F/8, 1/320 sec, ISO 400, 60mm.