From 35mm Colour Negatives to NDQ - Near Digital Quality

Background
About twenty years of black and white darkroom work (35mm and large format) ended in the mid-1970s, when matters of time, interest and convenience steered me to working more exclusively with 35mm colour film. I had been shooting chromes as well and continued to do so into the late 1970s. Then I switched to colour negative film and remained with it till October 2004, when I bought a used Canon 1Ds. That ended the film phase of my photography, except for the large legacy of colour negatives meriting more controlled editing and superior printing than available from affordable photo-film labs. 
Apart from its fully satisfactory resolution, low speed colour negative film has three advantages over chromes: (i) lower cost and greater ease of making prints, (ii) greater exposure latitude and shadow detail (see Inset 1) and (iii) the more natural quality of the colour, when properly processed. This qualifier got me hooked on digital photography. 
It was always a struggle g...