Color Negative in 35mm...

So after shooting 35mm C41 Portra/Ektar, and then doing the same with 120, I've been blown away. To be fair, I am...ahem... *scanning* (don't know who will optical print in NYC), but jeez, the colors are soo much smoother, and less "blocky"

I think I need to go out and pick up a fast handling MF camera now
I don't shoot anything fast moving, nor a lot in color negative, and development costs about the same (granted, for < half the shots)

Yeah, you would not choose a 35mm camera to get smooth tones. You do that to get something that handles a certain way.

Personally I love 35mm, both because of how it handles, and because of the beautiful grain it yields. Portra 800 or Fuji NPZ 800 (sadly no longer available) is what I love in 35mm color. To me, perfect for portraits and close-up work. Even printed big.
For landscapes and more formal work with tripods, I would probably dig out the Hasselblad and some Portra 160/400.

Portra 160 can be pretty smooth in 35mm.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

And that's pretty low res.

Nobody

Nobody has to convince me of the benefits of a larger-than-35mm neg or slide. I used a Yashicamat and a Rolleiflex professionally for years and love those big images. Now, 35mm is great for certain things but it sound like to me the kind of photography you do lends itself to a nice 120 camera. And there are some real bargains out there. I recently found a very nice Rolleiflex, 60 years old, for $180.

The 135 format excels at three things: 1. Portability/speed, 2. Very close macro, 3. Use of very long lenses. No matter what anyone tells you the quality won't match larger formats unless the print size is small enough to render the differences insignificant.

After going back and seeing some darkroom prints, 35mm looks pretty good - but scanned, 120 shines

Unless you're paying for very high quality drum scans, the sheer size difference of 120 film will make your scan itself far more accurate in terms
of correctly rendering hues. This is probably the wrong forum for explaining why, but it involves the nature of scanning itself. If you print the
the same films in the darkroom, apples to apples, the color and saturation should come out the same at the same degree of magnification.
Due to this fact, I prefer to test color neg films with 120 format, then review the results with a medium quality JPEQ scan, because my lab
provides that at reasonable cost. Based on that, I'll have a better idea what I'm doing when working with other formats, whether 35mm or when using expensive 8x10 sheet film. Critical testing is always done by evaluating my own darkroom prints, never via a scan. But since you can't just slap a color neg on a lightbox like a chrome to evaluate color, a basic scan or contact sheet will at least get you onto first base.