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Cathedral de Notre Dame Interior & Saint Chapelle
We planned to visit Notre Dame and St. Chapelle this morning.
Notre Dame did not open until 0930. We left the hotel around
1000. We stopped at a bakery and bought two Pains Au Chocolait.
It was a oval shaped croissant filled with some chocolate cream.
They cost €1.00 a piece. Very tasty.
We took a few additional external shots of Notre Dame (we took
several outside shots on Friday). We went inside walked around
the entire interior. There was a lot of stained glass and
paintings to see. Most of the shots I took came out pretty good.
In fact, some of the images were better than what you could see
with the naked eye. The height and size of Notre Dame was quite
impressive.
We then headed over to St. Chapelle. The entrance fee as €7.00).
It was even darker than Notre Dame. Most of the images came out
pretty good. The second floor of the church had some of the
tallest stained glass windows I have ever seen. They were
something like 50 ft. tall. Most of the image turned out good.
We stopped for lunch at street side cafe. We got a Pan Aux
Ongione Poulet (chicken salad sandwich), a beer and frozen
custard cone for €7.50 a piece. The sandwich was on flat
circular focatta bread which was then grilled. It was good and
cheap (our two favorite requirements).
We have noticed that the French love their sweets. You cannot go
anywhere without seeing candies, cakes, pies, pastries, etc. and
they seem to eat them with every meal.
We next went to the Church St. Severine. This was another church
where we had shot a few external shots but did not go in on an
earlier trip through that part of town. St. Severine was great
for taking pictures.
Most of the paintings and stained glass windows were lower, you
could get as close as you needed to get the shot and it was the
least crowded of all of the churches we had visited so far. I
think some of my best stained glass shots were taken here.
One of the features of the Nikon Coolpix 5400 that I had not
used yet was what is called the Best Shot Selector. In this
mode, you press and hold the shutter button while taking
multiple shots of the same image. The camera 'figures out' which
is most in focus and discards the rest. I used it a few times
when I knew the scene was dark and the images were likely to be
blurry and I was pleased with the results.
We went back to the hotel around 1300. My back was killing me
for some unknown reason and I needed a break and a Goody's
powder. It took an hour to transfer, rotate and autobalance the
341 photographs I took in 3 hours this morning.
The weather has been simply amazing. We expected lows in the 40s
and highs in the 70s. The lows maybe in the low 50s, highs in
the mid 70s. Today was the warmest so far and I'd bet it was at
least 75 today. Warm but still comfortable.
We saw more out of the ordinary cars in the Paris than we did in
London. We saw more Minis than we did London. They drive a lot
of bicycles, scooters and motorcycle than in London. They
definitely seem to favor cars made in France (Renault, Citroen,
Peugeot) than others. I'd lump European cars as a group in
second and than American, Japanese, & Korean a VERY distant
third.
I really like the Peugeot 406 coupe (there is also a sedan and
wagon version). It has nice lines, but then again it was penned
by Pinafarina, so that should be not that much of a surprise. We
have seen several of them throughout our journey and they are by
far the nicest car we have seen that is not available in the
States.
We went out at 2130 to get some night shots of Notre Dame. We
went into a park on the south side of Notre Dame because it gave
us a great view. It started to get dark around 2200 and we
noticed some lights but we were expecting the whole thing to be
lit up. It wasn't, only the west and east ends were.
I had not used my new tripod under fire yet nor had I used the
night landscape mode of the 5400. I was determined to get used
to them before we tried the night shots of the Arc de Triomphe
and the Eiffel Tower
The tripod is different than my old one. The fittings are
different and it moves differently. I managed to get the hang of
it, but there were times when I simply could not get it to line
up perpendicularly. It is much lighter and more compact than my
old one, but does not raise quite as high. If you want to take
night shots, a good tripod is a must.
Now, on to the shots. The shots of the west end of Notre Dame
came out great. Rock solid, clear no issues. While there was a
guy spinning flaming balls on chains. He was quite good flinging
them around, throwing them in the air and catching them and
dancing around. The shutter speed was set from 1 to 2 seconds so
you see arcs and esses as he spun them around. Quite unexpected
and a delight.
The shots of the east end were not as good because it was not as
well lit up and we could not get get as close. I took a few
series of shots of the east end from a few different locations
from across the street and across the river. Some of them are
definitely keepers.
The night landscape abilities of the Nikon Coolpix 5400 rival
the image quality of my Canon AE1 using ISO 800 film. I'd say
the electronic noise was less than the graininess you see in 800
speed film when you blow it up. You can capture similar motions
and similar shutter speeds. I continue to be impressed.
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