Darkroom prints too dark

As others have pointed out the negative is underexposed. You can tell by the lack of detail in the shadows. It might just be the meter in your camera is off a bit, or you don't quite know how it's working so you can make it work for you (it may have been fooled by the bright sky). For your next roll try a few shots at both 1/2 the box speed and at box speed and develop the same way. Also watch the exposure as you move the metered area around. Generally you want to give more exposure with negative film rather than less if you're unsure.

Sadly I think you can write off getting a print with detail on the left half. If you want to experiment and see what is on the film raise the enlarger head and make a crop with just the portion of the image with detail (the upper quarterish area). It might give you something you can practice printing with. My guess is your image is also a bit over developed so you may need to go down to a #1 filter or less, but it's hard to tell without seeing the actual negative.

I had the same problem with the default 75w in my Beseler 23cii, and went the ND gel route in the filter drawer. I prefer to stick with F5.6 so I use anywhere from 2-6 stops worth of gels to get me to a 20-40 second exposure. I print mainly 5x7 with occasional 8x10. Today's papers seem much faster than the Kodak paper I used on the mid 90s.

bdoss2006 said:

Yeah it goes higher but I think I read that a higher aperture decreases sharpness

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I've been blissfully unaware of that until now I personally like to begin with an aperture that gives me a test strip that shows gradual differences between each time change, so I never shy away from closing down as much as I need.

I hope the responses from encouraging members will give you new ideas to try.
If that shot is important for you to print properly, that will give you the encouragement to keep working at it and get the best of it; and it'll be a great learning experience. Good luck!

There seems to be a general misunderstanding about how important diffraction is when it comes to print or negative quality. We encounter the effects of diffraction when we reduce the size of the aperture to a smaller than optimum size.
Lenses will have apertures that maximize the potential for print quality - frequently about two stops down from the widest aperture/smallest f/stop number. But if you are making relatively low magnification prints - e.g. 8x10 or smaller from 135 or larger negatives - than the difference in quality between two stops down and closed to the narrowest aperture/lowest f/stop number will be hard to see in the print without a magnifier.
Those who are new to this should emphasize getting the exposure and contrast correct. If you want to start employing things like ND filtration or replacing the bulb to bring the light intensity within a desired range, that is fine, but I wouldn't make it a short term priority.

Without going into personal film speed & normal negative development tests, and assuming you're giving your prints full development...

...are you making contact prints at max black time?

This would be the minimum exposure at normal (or a wee bit soft) printing contrast which results in the negatives clear edge printing as max black. (The resulting printing time shouldn't be too long or too short, so adjust enlarger height and aperture accordingly).

This will tell you the unvarnished truth...if your negatives are too dark, too light, or have too much, or not enough contrast. (Lots of variables here, so take that as a sweeping generalization).

There is nowhere to hide from the brutal honesty of a max black time contact print.

This won't help with the negative we're talking about, but moving forward it'll let you know if you're consistently under or overexposing your negatives, or if there might be a consistent issue somewhere else in the chain.

koraks said:

That sounds puzzling. What's the point of developing unexposed film to get neutral density?

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I would not want to develop a sheet of unexposed large format film just for this purpose, it is just that over the years i have collected a nice stash of totally blanc 4x5 film due to all kinds of mistakes, like unruly shutters, forgetting to pull the darkslide etc.. These make for nice ND-gels and i would happely send him one by post if he asks for it.

Ah, right; I interpreted your post as deliberately taking an unexposed sheet and developing it.

Btw, an unexposed sheet doesn't have much density (well, it shouldn't have). Wouldn't it make more sense to use something with a little more density?

I'd consider cropping as shown below, but that's not important. Make a test strip such that the area inside the circle comes out almost paper-white. Then make a print (probably at grade 3 or 4) using that exposure. That should get you an idea of how to start.