I've been reading this thread and have one question:
Why do you want to profile a camera? For a science project, I understand. But why would a photographer want dead accurate color? After all, who shoots with dead accurate light?
Isn't the best color for the image what we should be seeking?
I understand prints matching the display, but matching Mother Nature? I don't get it.
To me it's about artistic integrity. I want to have my own personal style of color which I have control of and know how I deviate from realism. With digital cameras color reproducition can be much more accurate than it ever could with film. This fact is greatly under-utilized, most raw converters are stuck in a film thinking and their profiles is part of that - profiles deliver a "look" just like film did. In addition color adjustments possibilities are often a bit limited and coarse, like in Lightroom, as you're supposed to embrace the look of Adobe via their profiles rather than make your own look. The profile don't tell you how it changes the color, it just does it.
While it's a great approach for laymen or those that are not that into color, I don't like this approach. I want to make the look from scratch according to my taste and my eye for color, and the logical starting point for that is a neutral profile.
There is of course no thing like absolute accuracy, and when shooting landscape the light changes greatly. But the scale of which typical bundled profiles distorts color to acheive a look(tm) is so huge that light variations is just a breeze in comparison.
I do agree that we should be seeking the best color for the image, I just think that flipping through a bunch of manufacturer pre-defined looks is not the way to go for me. Another aspect is that when working with neutral profiles I think you get a deeper understanding of how colors work in a scene, what an image requires. I think that enriches the artistic side of my photography.
It's highly personal though, and I don't say using predefined manufacturer looks is wrong, I just don't think it's the right way for me and I think many other would appreciate this way to work too. Unfortunately the typical tools available have not made this way to work very easy, so it's little bit of a special interest of the few, and my technical DCamProf software won't change that unfortunately. It will help those with that special interest though.
