I'm seriously considering running a similar challenge next June. If I do, it'll be strict NO PP, D&P on the high street and the lo-res files posted so no need to put them anywhere near PS or similar and home scanning not allowed! OK, people will be allowed to tweak them and home scan them but those images will not be eligible for any prizes.
Maybe the prize should go to Mavis, the scan lady at Boots ??
That's the trouble with film, it doesn't go digital willingly, you've already disadvantaged it, halved its content, by scanning it, and then you tag team it with a ban on a sympathetic tweak.
I shoot slides usually but the chuckawaychallenge is colour neg so its not easy to process faithfully to the neg, however, the film is in date daylight balanced and if processed correctly I believe it would render a neutral tone regardless of what the scanner spits out.
The greens are nasty, not true to life or a representation of the scene, but that is a characteristics of the film and though I hate it, it wouldn't be right to change that.
Once you digitize your film frame, just like your frame from a digital camera, it seems to serve little purpose not to give it the basic once over.
But the basic once over means different things to different people..:shrug:
To do nothing seems extreme to me, to do more than WB, crop the crappy edges and level seems to be pushing it too far the other way, so........I dunno.