what's more there are numerous shots of barnabas wandering around in said blinding sunlight.
Perhaps the first time around you never read all the posts in the topics dealing with the '91 series' DVD release, so you may want to check out:
Review of DS Revival Series DVD as seen in 2006 Videoscope
starting with that particular post, and
1991 Series To Be Released On DVD
starting with that post.
Sadly, they will completely explain why, say, scenes in Ep #2 look like this on DVD:
while they look like this on MPI VHS and the original broadcast:
As for many of your other questions, they are also answered in several different '91 series topics. However, I will briefly mention here that ...
what were they going to do in season two?1897?
... something like that was indeed the plan. They were going to drop the whole Adam/Eve storyline in favor of introducing Quentin (played by Adrian Paul) and combining Peter Bradford's appearance with the Chris Jennings/werewolf storyline, with that character being played by Michael T. Weiss.