My time-lapse experience has been limited to using DSLR's locked down on manual exposure, white balance, focus etc, so that exposures do not fluctuate.
Then the camera needs to have a true manual mode, many recent ones do not.
cant you chance the aperture on these Powershot cameras?
Not if they have not got one.
Even if they have, they are of a limited range exposure wise.
Small sensor cameras do not need an aperture for depth-of-field control because it is so great anyway at full aperture.
Apart from such apertures being physically tiny, in 35mm terms they are equivalent to apertures 4.5x smaller (approximately).
So, f5.6 is equivalent to f22/32 !
If you stop down any more diffraction would reduce resolution.
If not how are you guys producing your videos without huge amounts of flickering. Software can presumably only stop so much?
You can set shutter speed from about 1/2000sec to 65 seconds (and even longer).
You can also set auto exposure mode.