Great questions, great answers and comments!

I thought I'd offer a completely different, perhaps complementary way to look at this question: There's more risk to more than 99% of the camera users out there of not using their cameras than there is of ever wearing their cameras out. Use your camera! Break it if you have to! But get it out of the case and learn something! Don't get hung up on what you're going to do to the camera -- it's replaceable, Canon has a big factory -- if you wear yours out, they can make another one. Give yourself a real reason to buy the next big thing from Canon in two years.

Worry about doing this project right -- worry about how much you're going to learn from this, worry about getting the very most from your data and the time/effort it takes to do the set up right ... do a couple smaller trial runs to ensure that you are going to collect the best data possible.

Finally, look at the economics. You can purchase a Canon T2i/550D camera body replacement for less than $700 (you won't have to; Canon will likely give you another if you wear it out doing this) $700 is less than a penny per actuation @ the quoted 100,000 actuation rating. Your time to really review, process, edit and really get the most from the data from 100,000 actuation is probably worth several times more $700 ... if you spend just 5 seconds on average per actuation/exposure processing your data, you'd spend 500,000 seconds ... at 8 hours/day of full-time data analysis and editing, that's almost a full month of utilizing your photographic data ... my assumption is that your time is worth at least 10X more than what the camera body costs -- if I can assume that your time was what supplied the income the supported the purchase of a discretionary item like this DSLR.

[NOTE: As an engineer who's been involved in launching/testing similar products; I'd be slightly surprised if your camera wasn't good for 250,000 or even 400,000 actuations if it's rated for 100,000 ... unless you've managed to somehow introduce some extremely fine powder or some other extra wear agent into the mechanism ... we typically test-to-failure and try to eliminate failure modes in the early failures; you be surprised how long it takes to get the last 95% of the population to fail ... yes, your camera could fail early; that's what warranties are for ... regardless of what the warranty says, the company is probably going to treat an avid user very well if the camera fails in the first couple months, i.e. Canon's cost per unit might not be zero, but it costs Canon a LOT, LOT less than $700 to replace the camera and buy an avid fan for life. Canon understands the DSLR market share game well enough not be stingy on warranty replacements.]

I thought I'd offer a completely different, perhaps complementary way to look at this question: There's more risk to more than 99% of the camera users out there of not using their cameras than there is of ever wearing their cameras out. Use your camera! Break it if you have to! But get it out of the case and learn something! Don't get hung up on what you're going to do to the camera -- it's replaceable, Canon has a big factory -- if you wear yours out, they can make another one. Give yourself a real reason to buy the next big thing from Canon in two years.

Worry about doing this project right -- worry about how much you're going to learn from this, worry about getting the very most from your data and the time/effort it takes to do the set up right ... do a couple smaller trial runs to ensure that you are going to collect the best data possible.

Finally, look at the economics. You can purchase a Canon T2i/550D camera body replacement for less than $700 (you won't have to; Canon will likely give you another if you wear it out doing this) $700 is less than a penny per actuation @ the quoted 100,000 actuation rating. Your time to really review, process, edit and really get the most from the data from 100,000 actuation is probably worth several times more $700 ... if you spend just 5 seconds on average per actuation/exposure processing your data, you'd spend 500,000 seconds ... at 8 hours/day of full-time data analysis and editing, that's almost a full month of utilizing your photographic data ... my assumption is that your time is worth at least 10X more than what the camera body costs -- if I can assume that your time was what supplied the income the supported the purchase of a discretionary item like this DSLR.

[NOTE: As an engineer who's been involved in launching/testing similar products; I'd be slightly surprised if your camera wasn't good for 250,000 or even 400,000 actuations if it's rated for 100,000 ... unless you've managed to somehow introduce some extremely fine powder or some other extra wear agent into the mechanism ... we typically test-to-failure and try to eliminate failure modes in the early failures; you be surprised how long it takes to get the last 95% of the population to fail ... yes, your camera could fail early; that's what warranties are for ... regardless of what the warranty says, the company is probably going to treat an avid user very well if the camera fails in the first couple months, i.e. Canon's cost per unit might not be zero, but it costs Canon a LOT, LOT less than $700 to replace the camera and buy an avid fan for life. Canon understands the DSLR market share game well enough not be stingy on warranty replacements.]

Great questions, great answers and comments!

I thought I'd offer a completely different, perhaps complementary way to look at this question: There's more risk to 99% of the camera users out there of not using their cameras than there is of ever wearing their cameras out. Use your camera! Break it if you have to! But get it out of the case and learn something! Don't get hung up on what you're going to do to the camera -- it's replaceable, Canon has a big factory -- if you wear yours out, they can make another one.

Worry about doing this project right -- worry about how much you're going to learn from this, worry about getting the very most from your data and the time/effort it takes to do the set up right ... do a couple smaller trial runs to ensure that you are going to collect the best data possible.

Finally, look at the economics. You can purchase a Canon T2i/550D camera body replacement for less than $700 (you won't have to; Canon will likely give you another if you wear it out doing this) $700 is less than a penny per actuation @ the quoted 100,000 actuation rating. Your time to really review, process, edit and really get the most from the data from 100,000 actuation is probably worth several times more $700 ... if you spend just 5 seconds on average per actuation/exposure processing your data, you'd spend 500,000 seconds ... at 8 hours/day of full-time data analysis and editing, that's almost a full month of utilizing your photographic data ... my assumption is that your time is worth at least 10X more than what the camera body costs -- if I can assume that your time was what supplied the income the supported the purchase of a discretionary item like this DSLR.

[NOTE: As an engineer who's been involved in launching/testing similar products; I'd be slightly surprised if your camera wasn't good for 250,000 or even 400,000 actuations if it's rated for 100,000 ... unless you've managed to somehow introduce some extremely fine powder or some other extra wear agent into the mechanism ... we typically test-to-failure and try to eliminate failure modes in the early failures; you be surprised how long it takes to get the last 95% of the population to fail ... yes, your camera could fail early; that's what warranties are for ... regardless of what the warranty says, the company is probably going to treat an avid user very well if the camera fails in the first couple months, i.e. Canon's cost per unit might not be zero, but it costs Canon a LOT, LOT less than $700 to replace the camera and buy an avid fan for life.]

Great questions, great answers and comments!

I thought I'd offer a completely different, perhaps complementary way to look at this question: There's more risk to more than 99% of the camera users out there of not using their cameras than there is of ever wearing their cameras out. Use your camera! Break it if you have to! But get it out of the case and learn something! Don't get hung up on what you're going to do to the camera -- it's replaceable, Canon has a big factory -- if you wear yours out, they can make another one. Give yourself a real reason to buy the next big thing from Canon in two years.

Worry about doing this project right -- worry about how much you're going to learn from this, worry about getting the very most from your data and the time/effort it takes to do the set up right ... do a couple smaller trial runs to ensure that you are going to collect the best data possible.

Finally, look at the economics. You can purchase a Canon T2i/550D camera body replacement for less than $700 (you won't have to; Canon will likely give you another if you wear it out doing this) $700 is less than a penny per actuation @ the quoted 100,000 actuation rating. Your time to really review, process, edit and really get the most from the data from 100,000 actuation is probably worth several times more $700 ... if you spend just 5 seconds on average per actuation/exposure processing your data, you'd spend 500,000 seconds ... at 8 hours/day of full-time data analysis and editing, that's almost a full month of utilizing your photographic data ... my assumption is that your time is worth at least 10X more than what the camera body costs -- if I can assume that your time was what supplied the income the supported the purchase of a discretionary item like this DSLR.

[NOTE: As an engineer who's been involved in launching/testing similar products; I'd be slightly surprised if your camera wasn't good for 250,000 or even 400,000 actuations if it's rated for 100,000 ... unless you've managed to somehow introduce some extremely fine powder or some other extra wear agent into the mechanism ... we typically test-to-failure and try to eliminate failure modes in the early failures; you be surprised how long it takes to get the last 95% of the population to fail ... yes, your camera could fail early; that's what warranties are for ... regardless of what the warranty says, the company is probably going to treat an avid user very well if the camera fails in the first couple months, i.e. Canon's cost per unit might not be zero, but it costs Canon a LOT, LOT less than $700 to replace the camera and buy an avid fan for life. Canon understands the DSLR market share game well enough not be stingy on warranty replacements.]