Is crushing blacks something that will be a long forgotten trait of the early 2000's technology in digital filmmaking technology. I say yes.
I think what will start happening, as we have seen Canon and other manufacturers do since they started moving into the digital camera space...companies will start to put items like 'crushing black / Black Gamma' into the hands of the user 'on top of the camera'. So instead of having these items in the menu of the cameras, they will be a dial - rated to have certain numbers (like the ND wheel on professional cameras). I think the sensors are going to be so sensitive, that these tweaks will essentially be so easy to manipulate, within range, that the individual users will have to just click the dial and 'see' the difference on the screen and make their decision from that.
Who knows what will happen, but I think the days of waiting to see what the image looks like after the post process are coming to an end...at least for easy adjustments that revolve around camera sensors etc.
- MR
