I think we must understand ultimately light is the most crucial factor in regards to the results of the picture. if there is insufficient light or too much light at a spot, you you normallly get slight over exposure or under exposure. In short (lack of details).
We can push technology by using filters but there will still be limitation.
I think there also huge different in black and white in contrast with colour films in regards to the latitude of the films. You can get a very long range of tones in b/w though strong understanding and carefully monitoring of the various films, exposure, and development process. As B/W deals only in grey tones, it is often unbiased in term of contrast. ( in 'fine' art printing like ansel adams.) Infact, negative have greater tone levels than that of the printing paper. Film like t-max have a very unbiase nature of tone values which also contribute to a rich level of details.
In color photography however, there is an additional factor which makes it harder to achieve a constant latitute. If you for example take a thick strip of yellow coloured paper and put it beside a thin red coloured paper, at some point you would find the red overwhelming.
One more factor that affect the latitute of the film is also none other than the nature of the medium. The physics structures of film is actually a curve 's' shape..(just like a graph) This due to chemical behavior of silver nitrate. At, different strengh of light, time of exposure silver ( a natural stubstance of the periodic table ) is very subjected to different results when reacted with the silver metal. Just like water, h20 actually expand after melting point. This sudden change after the 'constant' period is very natural.
In general, this physically property of the film can never be fully controlled by use of science. We can only try to push the limitations by using physics. And the problem will also be there unless you use digital.
