One good trick to control good contrast on B/W shots is to covert to Lab color, select the Lightness channel, then convert to Grayscale. Ignore the other channels. Once in grayscale, duplicate the layer and set to multiply. From there you can adjust the top layer opacity. If you want to filter out set areas, create two versions, one normalising the overexposed areas, ond one normal one and history brush between the two.