Avoiding clipping and noise in contrasty digital photos?

There are many techniques to correcting for the linear response to light of digital cameras, the most common of which has already been mentioned - HDRI. It's not terribly difficult, but of course, it's always easier to avoid such compositional situations altogether. While it's true that film has a greater latitude of response to light, in contrasty situations, it's not like film does something "magical" that digital cannot - especially if you're shooting with the full frame sensor of a 5D. It sounds like if anything, you should learn to properly meter the frame to figure out, on your own, what the dynamic range is, using your cameras meter set to spot. Figure out how many stops difference you get from the brightest highlight to the darkest shadow in which you want to retain detail and expose somewhere in the middle. Of course, if you are going out of your way to shoot a frame like this, it doesn't matter what you use as the capturing media, it's still not going to expose properly. That is why graduated filters are used - which can still work for digital if you don't want to go through the trouble of measuring the dynamic range with a spot meter yourself, then bracketing however many exposures (on a tripod) it takes to get all the proper range of the frame, then converting into an HDR. Those are your options.