Go ahead, make a poll. More useless doggy posturing with no meat to back up anything.
I've never understood why these disucssions get so heated, when in reality and day to day use, post processing, manufacturer's color response has gotten so much better.
The digital boys always seem to get a strap on, when someone disses their favorite process, but in reality it would be nice if 3rd party convertors could exactly read the files like the manufacturers intended. V4, DPP, etc. usually produce a better result in initial view than 3rd party convertors. (I said generally as there are no absolutes in photography).
Regardless . . .
Imacon to the newest Hasselblad is night and day in color, Leaf LC10 to LC11 is a huge leap and even the previous gold standard C1 to V4 has more controls, much better previews, faster processing and some features I mentioned that make matching images so much easier.
Lightroom I guess is now the standard and I use it for some images and like the interface though I personally find the first look requigues corrections more intense than the manufacturers software.
Even small products like Raw Developer produce beautiful color if you know the look you want to optain.
If someone is looking for a one button click for great color regardless of the scene, skin coloration, lighting, I don't think that is ever going to exist.
Now it would be nice if the medium format manufacturers made it so the presets or "film" you made in their raw convertors, or even 3rd party converters could be put into the camera so what goes in is what comes out and even though you can do this with Canon, it's not always picked up by all the brands.
With about 10million different light sources, another 10 million ways to mix and match light, working studio to location, ambient to mixed, etc. etc. I don't see how one click fits all is ever going to be a standard.
Still, if you were batch processing thousands of images from a shoot 2 years ago vs today and you constantly worked under heavy deadlines, you can't help but be impressed about how far digital capture has come. Two years ago a day of location shooting would mean 12 hours in post just to produce jpegs, now it's down to about 3 or 4 hours.
I've seen test after test and known photographers that have gone weeks, even months trying to find the perfect camera, color, look, that is easy and essentially a one button push and I firmly belive it's just not possible for all situations.
What may look good to someone on a precooked jpeg out of a fuji finepix is not really going to work in progessional post production.
From the start of photography film to digital everyone is searching for that unique, personal color pallete and unless you shoot catalog where the blues must be the exact blues, the reds must be the exact reds, etc., there has and always will be a certain amount of fiddling with imagery.
I understand how and why we are at this point with cameras, computers and software.
What I never understood is why most of the traditional labs could not make the leap of taking their expertise and color knowledge of film and apply that to digital.
Tradtional labs seemed to be in the perfect position to know how to match nc100, epr, provia etc. to a P30 or Canon file, as they had film examples from some of the world's best photographers, though very few of them made the investment into full bore digital post and fewer still are around anymore.
Regardless, the cameras and software have come a long way. I hold probably 80 terabytes of data (with backups) for my clients and probably have about 1200 web galleries on line.
When I go back a few years and look at the galleries from what I use to produce to what I send today, the process is much more refiened and elegent, at least in the initial web gallery view.
Still photography gets closer to cinema production daily and not just in shooting but in the complete review, process and finish out.
Pick up any magazine of importance or flip through any awards annual and you will see post work that will rival Ridley Scott.
That's just the way the process is going, everyone wants a unique look, everyone wants an edge and though expert digital post won't fix a crappy photograph, it can enhance it in ways that we never dreamed of before.
If anyone wants easy photographs, it's just not going to happen.
JR