Response to Which reducer to use

The only proper way of doing what you try to achieve is a two part process. This is also the professional way used by good custom labs. First you have to rehalogenize the negative which will enables you to redevelop. There are several receipes for bleaches that will achieve this, eg ORWO 710: potassium(II)-sulfate krist. 100g, sodium chloride 100g, sulfuric acid D20 25ml, add water to one liter. The bleach can be used for a very long time and has a very high capacity. Bleach out the complete image, which will be done in about 30secs to one minute depending on the temperature of the bleach. You will only see a faint yellow looking image. Redevelop in a negative devloper until you reach your desired density and then transfer to a stop-bath or plain water stop. You can doo this under light. Since the first development determined the acutance this will not change with the second development. What you will affect in the redevelopment is the grain size though. The classic formulations call for a super fine grain developer. The ORWO 710 recipe has a developer of 3g p-penylendiamhydrochloride and 20 g of sodium sulfite on one liter. Speed is no issue for redevelopment. I can highly recommend ORWO /Calbe A49 for redevelopment in 1:1 dilution or classic Rodinal R09 in 1:100 or 1:200 if you want to affect overal contrast. If you do not want to mix you own bleach then the bleach in sepia toner kits will do the same. Do not forget to wash between bleaching an redeveloping so that you do not have a carry over of bleach. This is a very safe process, since you can repeat it as often as you want as long as you do not fix in the end (which you have to to get permanent negs). This process will not only reduce but also intensify depending on the type of developer you are using. One part reducers are very hard to handle, since in the beginning not much seems to happen and then everything goes too quick. Also what you see is not always what you get, since the image often does change in the fix, which is the case with farmer's reducer.

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