In principle you can get huge dynamic range from negative film, Portra 400 has about 19 stops or so, but funky stuff happens to color response when you push the limits so it depends on how you see it. Film makes non-linear compression of highlights which make them strong in dynamic range. Negative film is also "easy" to scan as the negative is quite low contrast (ie those captured stops are put in a much smaller contrast range in the negative, and then you expand it again in post) unlike slide film which is dense and contrasty. You can use HDR techniques when scanning I guess to minimize noise in the scanning, but I don't think that is necessary for color negative in most cases. For slide film it can be though, especially if you need to push in post. If you choose to use slide film you don't do it to make huge contrast adjustments in post though, for that color negative is much better.
The scans I've seen from Castorscan have not been examples of tough lighting conditions though so I don't know what their scanning hardware can do.