I'd be surprised (and disappointed) if the older model had auto exposure adjustment and the newer one doesn't. Mine has a "mode" option with "50 Hz", "60 Hz", and "Outdoor" settings. The first two work best in lower light situations. I could try to leave it on the "Outdoor" setting and just use the brightness control to see if I can get an acceptable nighttime image, then see how it copes with sunrise. There's also a contrast setting I can mess around with -- I think it was automatically set on the highest level, so maybe that's part of the problem.

But, yeah, I think I can probably get something going in the way of a script to work around this, but I was hoping to avoid it.