Response to Which reducer to use

Actually no, since you cannot change the gradation of the neg with your reducer and this may be what you want to achieve too. The reducer you are looking at is subtractive. Many of these are based on the combination of potassium permanganate in a sour enviroment, e.g. ammonia or concnetrated sulfuric acid. These family of reducers gets closest to what one can call an "overall" reduction (if one opts for a one part formula). You can formulate these reducers yourself for very little money: For example ORWO 708: Water 100ml, potassium permanganate 1g and concentrated sulfuric acid 5ml. For reducing use 4ml on 400ml water. The ammonia in the formula you are looking at is just to trigger the process and can be substituted by sulfuric acid, even a sufficient amount of battery acid. Subtraktive reducers definitly work more on shadows than on highlights. The stock keeps for a very long time, the diluted reducer for some days. The redeveloping process I wrote about gives you many more controls, since you can adjust a variety of parameters AND the overall results mostly are superior, since the grain will not get coarser through reduction, which will get obvious if you reduce longer with almost any one part reducer. I therefore would only recommend one part reducers for prints and in this case it often is easier to redo the print. I do not know which film format you are using, but for 35mm film grain this is a real consideration. Photographers generally keep away from one part reducers if it is important work, since the effects cannot be previsualized. With redevelopment and can experiment without the penalty of losing your neg.

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