Originally posted by bobbotron This is one of those basic darkroom questions, feel free to fire me on to helpful resources.
I'm new to enlarging (so fun!), and have a problem where I'm always making my final photos a little too dark in the darkroom. I have a number of prints from last nights session that all are nice, but... a bit too dark. I think my problem is, I think it's dim in my dark room and that things will look brighter in the light of day. Anyway, helpful rubrics for how to get this right would be helpful! Perhaps I just need more practice.
That said, enlargements from my yashica suuuure are nice!
When you are looking at wet prints, they will look brighter. The term for what you are seeing is called "drydown". Zone VI Studios used to sell a timer that the drydown % could be dialed in. As a general rule, cut your exposure ~5% to compensate for drydown. You will have to play with this a bit, but this will get you in the ballpark.