Urggggg, 'Analogue film'? Let's just leave it at 'Film'. Hate the term.

Eddie

Here we go again with the urban myth of dynamic range!

Pretty much all digital cameras have MUCH HIGHER dynamic range
than any film, print or slide.  What people fail to realize is that
just as print and slide film must be exposed differently,
digital must be exposed differently than either type of film.

Here are some references:

 http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html

 Dynamic Range and Transfer Functions of Digital Images
 and Comparison to Film
 http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/dynamicrange2

 Digital Cameras: Does Pixel Size Matter?
 Factors in Choosing a Digital Camera
 http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/does.pixel.size.matter

For the OP, coming from the film world, you'll have a lot to
learn in processing your images.  A key difference between
film and digital is the characteristic curves:
film has a toe, digital does not.  You need to add a toe
with a "curves" tool in an image editor to get the film look
(otherwise digital images look dull).  While the raw data from
digital is linear, a tone curve is applied so that what you
get in your image is a response with a shoulder similar to
film.  That is shown on the above pages.

Processing, see: http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

As for what camera to choose, what kind of photography?
If you want low light night photography, that could steer you
in one direction, if you want sports, then another, although
some like the Canon 20D or 30D do well at both (at least as a
starter camera).  Then, depending on shooting style, you may want
image stabilized lenses (this is a big innovation that can
really improve photos and extend shooting conditions).
If you ultimately want sports/wildlife action with
super telephoto lenses, then that too restricts choices.
Then if you want sports/wildlife action with image-stabilized
super telephoto lenses, you are restricted to Canon at the moment.
If you want landscape, and high megapixel count, then you
may want to go for a larger megapixel count camera, but be aware
of pixel size, and they tend to be slower (frames per second).

Larger pixels (not megapixel count; the physical size
of each pixel) in general provides for better performance.
This should be obvious in the plots on the does.pixel.size.matter
link above.  I'll have a new digital sensor performance
page up in a week or so with summaries of many cameras.
Some specific cameras can be found at:
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/index.html#sensor_analysis
and references therein.

Roger

Digital sensors have more dynamic range to the shaddows than slide film,
and similar highlight limits.  Not bad at all.

The FujiFilm S3 and S5 (used with Nikon lenses) provide an additional 2
stops of highlight capture.  In the end more dynamic range than negative
film.

The contrast issue I usually see is low contrast in situations that
require a lot more contrast. (A problem which can make an image look
less "sharp" and "milky".)

As far as the type of photos I shoot, it varies. I tend to do quite a
bit of both food/product photography with strobes, and in my spare time
I enjoy shooting fine art-type work, with models
on-location....sometimes with strobes, but most of the time without.

I shoot RAW+JPEG and dialed down all the contrast settings for the jpegs
and yes I do find I like the lower contrast, lower saturation look. It's
easy to boost contrast and I do that about 1/3 of the time. Easier yet
to apply adjustments to a set of RAW files.

Actually, for many situations, it is possible to far surpass
medium format and even 4x5 with a simple 8 megapixel
digital camera.  e.g. See:

 Large Digital Mosaics as a Substitute for Large Format Film
 http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo/large_mosaics

I am a large format photographer (I have 4x5 and 8x10 cameras)
but I have not taken a large format film this year, but I
have done many large digital mosaics.

Roger