Since I've just come back from doing 5 canyons around Page, thought I'd record my experiences for anyone searching on the Forum in the future for advice about Antelope Canyon. We went in mid-August, so pretty much high seasons. The 5 canyons were:
8am Lower Antelope (with Dixie Ellis)
10am Canyon-X
2.30pm Upper Antelope (with Adventurous Antelope Canyon)
3.30pm Rattlesnake (combined tour with Lower)
4.30pm Owl (combined tour with Lower)
Few general observations: Apart from Canyon-X, no filming was allowed - Canyon-X is privately owned (as opposed to controlled by Navajo Nation). You pay a Navajo Nation daily access fee ($8 per person) - having paid it at Lower Antelope, we didn't have to pay it again for Upper Antelope, because our Lower Antelope receipt specifically mentioned it was included in the price. Both Upper and Lower were guided tours, whilst Canyon-X was wander around by yourself. You can't choose the guide you're given, but the guide will heavily influence your experience (more on this later). Based on other's comments on this forum, we opted to go with Lower Antelope early in the morning, and go in the afternoon for Upper Antelope - missing the light beams, but hopefully (as a result) at a slightly quieter time.
In terms of results, Lower Antelope was the best, followed by Rattlesnake, and then Canyon-X. Upper Antelope was a dark & dusty bun-fight, and Owl was not a slot canyon, but wider, and the owls had flown for the day, leaving little left.
Just two organisations serve Lower - Dixie Ellis and Ken's Tours. Both have substantial buildings near the entrance to the Canyon, Ken's being the closer, and the larger. There's a long covered queuing area at the entrance to the Canyon, which you can only enter one at a time, going down a series of steps. The main difference between the groups I could see was that Dixie handed out bottled water to the queue, whilst Ken's didn't. The bottleneck of the steps at the entrance means the queue can be long (our guide said up to 4 hours), but once you're in, it's a one-way flow dictated by how fast people climb down the steps, so (relatively) unpressured. Go early, as we did, as the queues will be better - busloads of Chinese tourists were arriving by the minute. Our guide was young, educated, and could talk the hind leg off a donkey. As it was, we waited around 30 minutes in the queue (despite arriving on time for our 8.10 group), and she kept us entertained and informed throughout. The canyon itself is reasonably light, and you couldn't really go wrong - point your camera in any direction, and there was a great shot to be had. There are a series of steps and ladders throughout, and we emerged close to the buildings, where more water was provided.
Canyon-X is an example of a local family seeing the Antelope gold mine, realising that they have a canyon on their land, and taking the opportunity of charging people to walk through it - or in this case, them - two much shorter canyons about 200m apart. The welcome desk is a picnic table, and then there's a shuttle pick-up service to the canyon head, and another buggy service to get down to the canyons proper. The main advantage of Canyon-X is that you're unescorted, and so can film and take pictures at your leisure. The downside is there's less to photograph, due to the shortness of the canyons. A lot of people had entertained themselves by creating delicately balanced piles of rock on the walk between the two canyons. Unless you want to film, I'd suggest going to one of the other canyons first, especially if time is limited.
Upper Antelope was a drive in a pickup along the Highway from the "Adventurous" base. The canyon was a very unpleasant experience. This was partly due to our guide - much older, all he did was dictate the exact picture to be taken in each location. He used the camera phone from one of our party to illustrate the picture in each case, but allowed no time for our own explorations - my daughter said she'd never felt so dictated to in her life. The non-photographing members of our party hung back to listen to the guide behind us, who had much more to say about the canyon itself. However, the bad experience was also due to the canyon itself. It's deeper, and therefore darker, than Lower, so other than a few locations, most of the pictures tend to be upwards, towards the light. Unlike Lower, it's a dead end, so there's a constant flow of people coming out as you're heading in. And it gets seriously dusty (much more so than the other canyons we visited) - all the guides wore bandanas around their faces towards the top end - and it actually affects the light you're shooting though, which becomes hazy. Note we went in the afternoon, hoping it would be quieter - and it was still a hassled bun fight. One twist - it was cloudy all morning (and sunny in the afternoon) - so we wouldn't have seen the light beams even if we had gone in the morning. We passed a couple of groups of people who'd signed up to the photo tours (tripods etc). On the one hand we were hustled past them, on the other they had a constant flow of people going past them (in both directions), and from I saw, there were relatively few places in the whole canyon they could set up tripods in the first place - I was very happy we hadn't signed up to a photo tour.
Rattlesnake continued with the same guide, who now he had no advice about pictures, reverted to moaning about how badly the Navajo were treated. On the plus side, it was only our party of 6 in the whole canyon (only slightly shorter than Upper/Lower), and we had an hour to wander through it (and away from our guide) at our leisure. Rattlesnake is a less deep canyon than Lower Antelope, so there were no issues with light or dust - however, pictures tended to be taken much more along the canyon than up. Despite the height, it's much narrower and twisty in places than Upper/Lower, so required a bit of contortion to get through at times - however than twistiness means it has just as good rock formations as the Antelopes, and in terms of number of great pictures we took, it ranks alongside Lower, including my favourite shot out of all the canyons.
We threw in Owl canyon as a chance to see some desert owls (for an extra $20). As it was, there were no owls, and it's not a canyon you'd visit otherwise.
A final note on equipment - I carried a 5D Mk IV with 16-35mm F4, and a 5Ds with 24-105mm F4. Both served me well - I didn't feel the need for anything wider, nor anything longer. In terms of number of pictures, I took 2:1 using the 16-35 to the 24-105, so if I was to pick one, it'd probably be the 16-35, but either would do. My daughter took over 700 pictures quite happily with a 24-105 on a 6D. Backpacks are not allowed in the Antelopes, however I carried a telephoto in a pocket for Owl Canyon, and that wasn't challenged.
Hope you've found this useful!
