Time lapse - video or stills

[HyperD]

Hi,

I want to try my hand at some time lapse videos but not sure whether to record video (and then speed up in post) or to take lots of still images (combined in post)?

Which has better quality?

Is taking that many still photos a detriment to the shutter life? (I.e. realistically would it significantly increase it towards its max life)

I am pretty sure I would need to load up magic lantern to easily manage this kind of shoot

 

[CSB]

Stills will give you better quality and more control over long duration time lapses like a few hours or even a day. If the time lapse duration is really short (like 15 minutes reduced down to 15 seconds) then it might be easier to do it with video, it all depends on the situation.

You can easily rack up thousands of shutter actuations doing time lapse but I wouldn't worry about it too much, depending on your camera most of them are rated to at least 50,000 actuations many of them 100,000 or more. I've heard of cameras with around 200,000 shutter actuations still going strong.

Magic lantern does make it easy to do time lapse but you can do it with an intervalometer as well if you want, I use magic lantern for mine.

 

[jam12]

Using stills also gives you a lot more flexibility in post. You'll be able to push in a heck of a lot more plus create digital tilts, pans, or even tracking shots to make the timelapse more dynamic and elevate it from the more bog standard ones you see (Assuming your final output will be HD for web use).