I don't believe you can really do much for calves unless you give them a lot of work to do over and above what they are conditioned to do already—which is an awful lot! Consider that in merely walking along, you are carrying your full body weight on one leg with every step you take, over and over again. It's like some giant max-stim set! Due to this and all the other activities you engage in, your calves are tough.
I think the whole belief in the 'higher reps' for calves idea is merely because of the amount of work done. Most people that use heavier loads just don't do enough work at that loading to stimulate much of a PS response. Trouble is, if you do higher reps you are having to use lighter, less effective loads—well, they'll be effective for a short time but then your calves will get conditioned to the load and refuse to grow any more, however many sets you care to do.
I'd do a load progression for calves just like any other muscle group but I'd use heavier loads than I would use for other muscle groups at the start of a cycle (eg. I'd start with a load that would allow me to do 10-12 reps and increment from there) and try to do a good number of sets. I don't think 30-50 reps per session is unreasonable once your calves are used to regular full ROM exercise. (NB. That said, do ease in carefully; it's very easy to overcook your calves at the start of a cycle and induce DOMS from hell when they aren't used to the range of motion they will be working over.) In order to get enough work done it's quite a good idea to weave sets for calves between other exercises in your workout. That way it wont seem like 5 sets for calves is taking an age.
Another thing to bear in mind is that calf development is very much a genetic thing. Although it must be true of other muscles as well, calf muscle tissue volume varies a great deal from person to person. Some relatively small light folks have a ton of calf muscle mass whereas some tall heavy folks have small, high calf muscles. You can only work with what you've got so don't expect miracles. A lot of people who work calves do so because they happen to have a dearth of muscle tissue in that area. There is no way you will ever get calves like Tom Platz if you've started out with short, high calf muscles.
The best calf muscle increase that I have ever seen (over the course of a year) was in a young lad who was roiding. He did a few heavy sets of calf-raises everyday. His calves blew up! Mind you, so did the rest of him—can you say 'stretch marks?!'