What I first noticed years ago with film seems to be consistent with digital: that color saturation and contrast sort of relate to each other, and that exposure affects both.
In other words, for most shots under adequate light, I got better color saturation and contrast (or the appearance of it) by underexposing -1/3 stop or so. It gave shots more pop.
With digital, however, instead of exposure compensation, I have bumped the saturation and contrast one notch in my camera and seldom need to underexpose a shot to get this effect.
I do this because I shoot for publication and have learned that the steps of the printing process rob images slightly of color and contrast.
This practice has come through years of trial and error, but I’ve never really given the relationship of color-contrast-exposure any serious thought as to what is going on (on a physics level), and was wondering if some here might like to discuss it?