QUESTION: What are your recommendations for taking better day-to-night and sunset timelapses with the GoPro HERO 3+ and avoiding flickering?

QUESTION: Hello, I just watched your video on the low light time-lapse of the HERO3+. Do you have recommendations of what settings I could you for sunsets and day to night city time-lapses? My first few videos resulted in a lot of flickering. [E]very time a plane flies over it's like a different image.


MY ANSWER: Day-to-night and sunset timelapses are some of the hardest out there because the light temperature is changing so drastically; from daylight when the sun is up (~5600k), to a much warmer sunset (~2000k or less), and then to whatever the predominant color of artificial lighting is in the city you are filming. To take care of this, you can set the white balance to something other than auto. The best bet is to usually choose something that looks good when you are starting the time lapse and just to hope it continues to look good as the sun sets and the light temperature changes.
Another hard thing about day-to-night and sunset timelapses is the fact that the amount of light your camera is exposed to is usually decreasing very rapidly. To combat this, the first thing I almost always do is turn on spot metering. This makes it so the GoPro pays more attention to the center of the frame when trying to decide what the correct exposure should be. Sometimes this can be kind of hit or miss, but it usually helps. The second thing is to make sure you aren't setting the frequency at which the GoPro takes a picture to too small or too large of a number. For sunset timelapses (depending on how long you plan to set it up for), I usually set mine to take a picture every 5 or 10 seconds. I have set it to 30 or 2 seconds once or twice, but 30 secs usually tends to lead to the frames looking too different and 2 secs occasionally will not leave enough time for the GoPro to properly expose the image when it is really dark.
That's really about it. Other than that the only tips I have are just the standard tips for when taking a timelapse, like: make sure the GoPro is on a stable surface, that you don't get any reflections on the window if you are taking it from inside, and that your lens is clean. Trial and error is unfortunately the only way you can really find out for yourself what works and what doesn't, so just keep on taking timelapses and eventually you'll get the hang of it.