Every film has it's own character and you may like one over the other.
What that means technically is all film lies to a varying extent, and for many photographers it amounts to a random number generator. The inability to accuratley quantify the exact differences between different film types is what aggravates me the most when it comes to debating with small format photographers who are still insistant on using film.
Having drum scanned almost every type of film out there and many which are not available any more, I would say not to worry so much but just get out and shoot.
Bad advice. Shooting print film and sending it to a lab running a drum gives you at best a 50/50 chance of getting color within the same ball park as shooting chromes. In most circumstances your $500 desktop scanner has better print film profiles than a $50,000 drum. A commercial lab running a drum has no idea what color is supposed to be with a color neg unless they happen to get lucky and find a white value in the scene while many of your cheaper desktop scanners have algorithms written into them that can make a good quess.
I've set up several commercial scanning workflows, along with profiling a few for color print films - which was hard to ay the least. Contrary to the 'try them all because all film is wonderful' myth, there are distinct technical reasons to only bother with a couple of conventional films for scanning purposes. The link posted above is technically poorly written with amatuer examples and bad conclusions. Print film is a lousy medium for landscape work unless the subject matter is under extremely high contrast or adverse lighting. If I'm shooting a wedding, I'll use NPS 160 or Kodak NC 160. Print film otherwise compresses tonal ranges which can be desireable for portraiture, but 'dumbs down' color gradients and long tonal ranges, which is ugly for other applications.
Fuji Astia 100F should be the reference for anybody desiring a 100 speed, fine grain, high performance color film for scanning. Print films like Reala, Kodak NC 160, and Fuji's pro 160 counterparts have more lattitude, but they lack the density range of slide films like Astia, and density range is the only remaining nuance that film has to compete with digital - period. I've also yet to see any range of scanner that doesn't perform superbly with Astia, while color print film is hit and miss depending on the accuracy of the built in profiles. Some scanners do pretty good with professional print films, while other are horrid. None are what I would call 'superb' with print film and all require some degree of tweaking.
Things get more complicated when more speed is desired, and this is where a switch to print film is justified. Kodak I believe makes the only 400 speed pro print film in sheet film format. Fuji Pro 400 (NPH) is exceptional in roll format, although again it's a material that happiest with portraiture and only mediocre at anything else.
For B&W, stick to shooting color film and desaturating, 4x5 size or otherwise. 20 years ago I'd pull out Tri-X and a jug of Rodinal, but not today.