What the best setting for picture quality for time lapses?

[Arif Syed]

I'm new to time lapses and photography in general, so I am wondering if I should shoot the images raw or in L...with the smooth curve (once again I apologize for my lack of knowledge) or in any one of the other settings. I want to take advantage of pulling in and out of the shot and doing dolly moves in post...so what should I do?

[David Chilson]

Arif,

I use large for for timelapses with movement and medium for static. Both methods can produce HUGE files. I have never used raw files, not sure what the benefit would be other than more latitude for correction but I would think you would end up converting them to jpeg, tiff etc anyways. If I shoot on the medium setting, premier will let me import them directly. On the large setting they have to be resized in photoshop first. Not sure why this is because I have checked the "resize to fit" box in the preferences drop down. Don't know what you are using to edit your time lapses so obviously your mileage may vary. Hope this helps.

[Erik Andersen]

L will do the trick for sure, in fact M or even S would blow away HD in resolution. If you were doing an endless time lapse with a small card, I'm sure you could get away with S. But of course L is the best way to go.

You'll benefit by having an ND filter, so that you can shoot with a very long shutter speed. This long exposure will create the blur that will make the accelerated motion in your video look more natural, smooth rather than stuttering. I like to bring the shutter speed down to 1/3 second.

In connection with actually creating the time lapse video, here's a great workflow using Quicktime, courtesy of Philip Bloom. It works really well.

How to make video timelapse from DSLR stills on Vimeo