Day night sensitivity settings for deep evening sky color?

[piconut]

I have a DS-2CD2032-I running firmware V5.2.0 build 140721. I use the camera for a weather cam and to make a timelapse of the sunset. I cannot figure out the settings to make it so that when the light gets low and the sun is just below the horizon, that it still stays in color and doesn't switch to the night mode until about 30 minutes past sunset or until there is really no more color to the sky. Can someone help me out here? I perused about 8 other threads on similar issues but none had what I needed. I should also mention that I have the exposure time set to 1/30th and I turned off Smart IR because I do not need the IR light as it does not seem to help light up anything (the sky is pretty far away, right?).

Thanks...

 

[nayr]

might look at the api calls, something like you need is often done externally.. a bit of code and you could trigger a call to the camera 30mins after sunset to switch to night mode, and then switch back before sunrise.. leaving the camera to be switched externally with internal logic disabled.

look at nodejs and its 'suncalc' and 'request' npm modules.. it could pull it off without much work once you figure out how to change it from night/day from a url request.

the built in day/night logic was never really designed for your application so its no surprise your struggling.. it uses a hardware sensor and its not going to be sensitive enough for your project.

 

[wxman]

First, the 1/30 shutter is going to get dark pretty fast. I would recommend setting the shutter to 1/3....The thing to note about the shutter speed setting is that it's not a "fixed shutter speed", but a "slowest possible shutter speed"...Simply put, during the day, the shutter speed will automatically increase significantly (probably like 1/2000 or faster). As it gets darker at night, the shutter speed will automatically slow until it reaches the the slowest speed possible (ie. the setting you have it capped at)...Having yours set to 1/30, this means it will jump up to 1/2000 or so during the day and as it starts getting dark in the evening, it'll slow down (stopping when it reaches 1/30)....If you set it to 1/3, it will still look the same in the day, but it will be able to slow to as much as 1/3 during the evening. This will lengthen the sunset time and keep the sky looking colorful until well after dusk. (if there's moonlight or city lights nearby, you may even be able to watch the clouds throughout the whole night on 1/3, where that would be nearly impossible at 1/30...

Second, if your purpose is to watch the sky, you really don't need the IR or to ever allow the camera to switch to black & white "night mode"...I would set the "day/night switch" to "day" only so that it remains in color at all times. While doing this, you can still set a manual "time switch" between day and night profiles if you need to have the contrast, sharpness, etc. differently at night. It will remain in color "day mode", but will switch to your "night image settings" at the time you set.....You can set this time manually for when you feel it needs to change (and adjust it once every few weeks as the days get longer/shorter)....Alternatively, if you keep a computer running at all times, you can use a PERL script to automatically adjust between day and night profiles based on the current day's sunrise/sunset (can also tell it to make the adjustment X minutes before/after that sunrise/sunset time).

P.S. As a weather nerd myself and having setup a number of these for the purpose of weather monitoring, I'd love to see your cam and timelapses if they're online. I may be able to recommend some specific setting adjustments based on the image itself as I've done a lot of experimenting with this. If you're interested, but don't want to post the links openly on the board, You could send me a private message. I'd be more than happy to help you out in any way that I could.