After loads of suggestions, here's my twopence, too.(posted 8921 days ago)Your mentioning the printing exposure time implies that you found it long in comparison to what you are used to from other film/developer combinations you have tried and *printed on the same paper*. If that is so, this is indeed a strong indication that something is not right. If you have changed your paper or your light source, this might be aller there is to it.
Ruling out the other trivial errors, such as
- wrong speed on the meter (in-camera or other),
- wrong developer dilution (too concentrated).
you are left with the following potential causes:
1) Development time is too long.
In this case, the negatives are not underexposed, i.e. there is sufficient shadow detail (as you say there is), but the lights are very dense. To check, make a test shot of a test target with at least three uniform areas of sufficient size, and under diffuse lighting. Try to measure the reflective contrast between the areas. The difference between the darkest and lightest areas of your test target should be about five or six f-stops, and the dark and light areas should have some detail. Process the film as you did before, and try to print it with both the dark and the light areas showing some detail. If that takes about grade 2 or 3, I think there is no problem. If you need a very soft grade, the development time is too long. Reduce by say 15% and try again.
Alternatively, if you find it hard to produce an appropriate test target, get a fairly uniform surface with some texture, such as a woollen sweater. Bracket this around the exposure suggested by your meter, starting at minus five stops, minus four ... plus/minus zero (i.e. meter reading) until plus five. Process the film as before. Then print the minus-two shot on grade 2 so that it comes out pretty dark, but with full detail. (It's the zone III shot.) Print the plus/minus zero one *at the same time/aperture and grade*. It should be very similar to an 18% gray card. The plus-three shot should (when printed exactly as the others) still show some highlight detail. Again, if this holds, you have no problem. If the plus shots are too bright, you are over-developing.
2) Overexposure If the meter setting is correct, and the film is overexposed, you will naturally find lots of shadow detail, and with modern films and developers, the hightlights may still be on the linear part of the characteristic curve. The film will, however, be unnecessarily grainy. If you can compare your meter's reading of a sufficiently uniform area to that of another meter, you should find a potential malfunction. If no other meter is available, shoot a test target. (See above.) Measure the test target (preferably spot-metering, or from a close distance), and shoot it at the exposure given by the meter, minus two f-stops, minus three f-stops, ... until say, minus five f-stops. If the reading was OK, the shot at minus two f-stops will give you a zone III negative, i.e. one with full shadow detail. The other shots should have less and less detail. At the latest, the one at minus five should be clear film base. (Compare it to the unexposed film rebate.) If it is not, you are indeed over-exposing., i.e. your meter gives low readings.