Hello Richard.
As always, do what makes you happy and it will probably work well.
Over the last few years I have taken up scanning 120 film for digital printing, in addition to my normal digital work.
My experience is that the scanning process opens up the highlights and shadows to give the files a more digital look. A little more so in colour than with B&W. This is fine with me unless I want to retain the "film look" when printing, in which case I apply custom curves in Photoshop to mimic the shadow/highlight roll-off response of the original film I used. For me that's usually Fuji Reala and Neopan 100.
Nowadays I almost never use B&W. I would rather use colour film and convert to B&W later, as with digital. It gives me much greater control over the underlying greyscale structure for each colour and allows me to easily adjust the contrast and brightness around the main subject in order to add depth to the image.
Then I will choose my blackpoint and whitepoint based on a 65 patch threshold test chart for the given paper/printer. There was an article on this recently here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/beyond_calibration_2.shtmlIn Photoshop I can then place my important shadow detail at the appropriate density above my fist visible darks (based on the likely display lighting) so the shadows have depth and detail. Ditto for the highlights.
I closed my darkroom in 1969, and looking at prints from that time, the blacks were rubbish compared to what can be done now. Much the same for prints by some the great photographic artists over the last 100 years. Yet their work was remarkable. While not comparing myself to them, I try to learn from what they did and often don't go for the deepest black I can produce. I think it more important to look at the notes I want to emphasise and look at their relationship to the high and low notes of the print.
The other thing that has been useful is sample packs from paper manufacturers. Over the last five years I've printed a standard image on every paper I've had easy access to. There is a large drawer full that has allowed me to pick the look I want to achieve. I use only three papers now, but if one proves hard to get there are substitutes in a folder at the top of the stack.
Just as an aside, for some critical work with film, I may go back to B&W for this reason. I can develop my own B&W in about half an hour, hang it up in the shower to dry, and the film comes out reasonably unmarked. I don't have or want the facility to develop colour film, and when I send it out for processing it almost always comes back with little bits of the emulsion missing, which have to be cloned back in Photoshop after scanning. There are "discussions" going on with the lab I use, but I haven't found anyone yet who can do better. My last exhibition using early cameras needed a solid month of repair work before printing. Bother.
David