With the move towards digital photography, are the top end digitals able to compensate for things like film type/brand and such as mentioned in this thread?
Absolutely, Murph. Although I have to say there is something magical about Velvia film that I have yet to see convincingly replicated with digital. Most decent digital SLRs have several different color modes now (presets with different contrast, saturation, color tone, etc) and basic b&w modes, too, but I don't think there are any out there that actually try to mimic different film types. There are 3rd part computer programs that try their best to do that, though.
The big benefit to digital is that you can give it any kind of color cast, saturation, contrast curves that you can by processing the file in programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, etc. The downside is that you usually don't get the right contrast, color, and saturation without having to process it on the computer, at least in "fine art" photography. Not that I'm calling my stuff fine art, but I post process every shot I take (except for quick snapshots).
