Panama City from the Panama Canal

Ever wonder how much money they make from the Panama Canal? How about enough to build this GLEAMING city! Whenever I look at this image I think of the Emerald City from the ‘Wizard of Oz’.

While on a cruise I took this shot of Panama City in the distance as we transited the canal near the Pacific Ocean side. As an example of just how much revenue comes from the canal our ship’s single daylight transit of the canal, arranged a year prior, cost approx $800k USD. It was a big ship (Norwegian Bliss) and we used the new locks, but that’s a LOT of garbanzo beans.

Nikon Z6 + Sigma 18-250mm DX lens

ƒ/6.3 (various focus lengths) 105mm ISO110

*Notice the imperfection in the HDR image processing of this image. Originally this image was 5 images shot at 1/1600, 1/800, 1/400, 1/200 , and 1/100 sec and combined in software. In the image’s 7 o’clock position look for the disjointed light standard showing that the ship was probably moving between shots and that the software didn’t correct for this.