Palouse, SE Washington State

The same negative. The first is a scan of the contact, the other an 8x10 enlargement. The scan of the enlargement doesn't look too bad, but the actual enlargement is very muddy, with no nice whites in the clouds or on the roof of the barn. The contact on the other hand looks great. The same filter (2 1/2) and paper was used for both. I've tried the enlargement with different times and filters, with no success. Anybody have any ideas as to what is going on?
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Location
Palouse, SE Washington State
Equipment Used
RB67
Film & Developer
Delta 100
Paper & Developer
Dektol, Arista Edu Ultra
Lens Filter
yellow-green
This is the contact. Incidentally, the negative was overexposed and is quite dense, but to me that doesn't explain why the contact looks fine and the enlargement looks like mud.
 
Contact prints in my experience are snappier than enlargements. Adams in his book "The Print" discusses the considerable effort required to enlarge versus the simplicity of making contact prints. In the end, the contact print with perhaps a bit of dodging or burning is an example of what you might achieve after a lot of work at enlarging.
 
What did you develope your film in? I have about 200 negatives from the Palouse and my greatest problem has been using pyro as it seems to make my prints with my aristo cold light overly soft. I use EDU ultra paper exclusively and find it is a bit softer than Ilford. I would try using a 3 1/2 filter with a preflash of the paper.
 

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