Among other things(to expound on what you're saying, not contradict, especially since I know you know all of this), B&W film shooters often use colored filters over the lenses. A simple case is that unfiltered panachromatic B&W film typically will render the sky a featureless light gray or clear. A yellow filter grays up the sky a bit while keeping the clouds white, while orange makes the sky a bit darker and red makes the sky black with the clouds still white.
Typically shooting the B&W mode in-camera is the equivalent of using ufiltered panachromatic film. I could see some cameras offering digital "filters", but Fuji would be my best guess of who would do it(trying to remember if my S5 does it, and don't have any MILC Fuji experience).
Just going into your image editor of choice and clicking "desaturate" does this also.
Lightroom at least has pre-programmed filter settings for B&W conversions. I've also used a fee stand-alone program that was really good at this too and I loved because it would both emulate the spectral response of a film stock and let you apply filters(SilverFX maybe?).
Then of course you can go the channel mixer route in Photoshop, or its equivalent in other programs, and get the exact effect you want dialed in more finely than you ever could with film.
Going back to B&W film, if you have it processed your typical commercial lab often uses a Kodak D76 equivalent processed for what would be an equivalent to ~7 minutes at 68ºF(or slightly overdeveloped Tri-X). This gets a useable image out of most any film somewhere in the ballpark of being exposed correctly, and in fact this is my default development for unknown film at home. They turn around and print it to a grade #2, which is okay for a lot of images.
At home, I start by selecting a developer suitable for my purposes. I often use D76, but dilute it 1:1 for lower contrast and less apparently grain with a small loss of sharpness. I'll sometimes use HC110, mostly for convenience, but other developers like TMAX and Rodinal have their place for me. I adjust times according to exposure, and of course use published times sometimes modified based on my own experience for each film, not a "one size fits all." Typically if I haven't done darkroom work in a while and have a backlog of film, there's going to be a mix of Tri-X and FP4+(and maybe some other stuff thrown in) and I only ever group like films together in a tank.
Then, printing is a different story. I start by finding the right exposure, and then dialing in a contrast grade that suits best. I start with #2, and then go lower or higher based on what I see. My contrast filter set consists of 14 filters in 1/2 grade steps, so I can really narrow it in(and that's one big advantage of multigrade paper over graded, although I only know of a handful of graded papers on the market). If I'm using my Leitz V35 with a color head, or really color head but that's the only one I have, I can dial in increments even finer than 1/2 grade, although that's splitting hairs. That's just the start of printing, and not accounting for dodging and burning or more advanced techniques.
