That Camera's Gamma:
IMX265 is the Sony sensor - I'm going to guess the camera is the DFK 33UX265?
That camera does have a gamma feature you can use (simple gamma) it also allows the use of a LUT if you wanted a more exact transfer curve for Rec709 (HDTV) or sRGB (Computer monitor).
For computer monitor viewing, applying a gamma of 1/2.2 (i.e. 0.4545) to linear image data is (essentially) the inverse or the 2.4 gamma of the monitor with a small gain included). As Mattdm pointed out, you want to set your black and white point before applying the gamma.
Color Desaturation
Color desaturation is not the "inevitable result of gamma," perceived saturation is affected by a number of interdependent factors.
EXPOSURE: when shooting on film, if you overexpose and then print down, you'll get richer, deeper saturation. This is true in digital photography as well, so long as you don't clip at the high end, exposing high and then adjusting down will result in a perceptual increase of saturation. (Thus the reverse is if you underexpose and print UP, you reduce saturation.)
LIGHTING and SCENE/SURROUND: The lighting in the scene and the surrounding imagery will affect local color perception.
DYNAMIC RANGE/CONTRAST: This also affects apparent saturation — as mattdm pointed out, raising the black level and lowering the white level (which increases contrast) also increases saturation — in fact, you can "sort of" consider saturation as a function of colorcontrast.
DEBAYERING ALGORITHM: The nature of the algorithm used to debayer (demosaic) the RAW samples can have a marked effect on saturation. Among other things, the spectral weighting of R, G, and B is 0.21, 0.71, 0.07 — and if a different weighting is used, saturation can be substantially affected.
What is Gamma Anyway?
Gamma is a curve that is related to the human visual perception curve. Gamma is used in digital images to increase the data density in the dark areas of the image where the eye is most sensitive to changes, thus reducing artifacts like "banding" and noise.
In old analog systems such as broadcast television (NTSC/PAL), using gamma reduced apparent noise in the transmission, and the whole broadcast chain for that matter.
For computer viewing use, the standard is "sRGB", which uses a transfer curve with a gamma close to 0.4545 (1/2.2) designed to display on a monitor with ~2.4 gamma (of a 1.1 gamma system gain).
While applying a 2.2 exponent to each color channel (after debayering) is typically close enough, if you are doing image manipulation then the "official" transfer curve has a linearized section which prevents math problems such as an infinite slope at zero. For linear RGB (range 0.0 - 0.1):
