When I turn the color all the way down on my hc1 I get much less low light noise. Granted the colors don't look great but in low light it dosen't matter anyway and at least I can turn the iris all the way up and not see spots.

What I usually try is taking something really ORANGE and then play around with the colours and what how that changes. When I turn down the colour while watching the ORANGE object, if it becomes too desaturated, I go back a few notches. I don't think there is going to be a work around to the low-light capabilities on this one and I would hate to lose the colouring over it.

how do you turn the colors down? in post or in the camera?
thanks

In camera there is a manual setting for colour saturation.