Snow brings chaos to the Paris area - by S95

[Franglais]

There was a heavy snowfall on Wednesday afternoon, which brought chaos to the Paris area. It took me 3 hours to get home (fallen tree on the railway line). Gave me ample time to try out the Canon S95 compact in conditions that suit it - night shots.

All pictures hand held with the camera on Program mode, RAW converted into JPEG, mostly 1600 ISO, 10Mpix (no need to use candle-light mode)

[Franglais]

For people who say "Yes but you've posted it too small. We can't SEE what 1600 ISO looks like". Here is a 100% view extract from the middle one with the tree, 1600 ISO, 1/8s f2 at the equivalent of 28mm (remember the lens has image stabilisation)

[Photo-John]

That's a lot of snow, huh? ;-P

These look really good. Are you using any noise reduction in post-processing? When I compared RAW high ISO S90 samples to the in-camera JPEGs from the S90 and the SD4500 IS, the JPEGs looked a lot better because of minimal noise reduction with the RAW files. That 100% crop looks better than I would expect.

[Franglais]

A small amount of slippery snow + a large number of cars and lorries + a steep hill = chaos.

The freeway just outside the village plunges down into the valley then climbs back up the other side. If a lorry jackknifes up front with thousands of cars behind then it's finished. 60 people had to sleep in the village school overnight after abandoning their cars...

I didn't do any special noise reduction, just used the DPP software that came with the camera. I hope I'll get the opportunity to try the camera out in daylight at Christmas.

[WesternGuy]

Nice images Franglais, but where I live, we get that sort of stuff every winter and the results are always the same, every fall/winter the first time it happens - complete traffic chaos. When was the last time you had snow like that in Paris?

WesternGuy

[Franglais]

According to the statistics the last time we had 11cm (more than 4 inches) of snow was in January 1987. For me it was more like January 1998 (I had to walk home). If the trucks aren't out salting the highway before the snow starts then the falling snow gets crushed into a sheet of ice by traffic. Everything stops including the salting trucks.

In Paris city traffic is just slowed down (the city is almost flat). I live some way outside in a fairly inaccessible valley. It's one of the prettiest parts of the Paris area - and the most difficult when it snows.