I use bare minimum of it just to reach clear highlights and have clear water dripping off of it in the drying process.
I have observed that:
- having too little hypo often leaves sediment on film that can be wiped away. This is fixed by increasing hypo incrementally until film/highlights are completely clear. Doing this gets me to the "default level of hypo for a film X" and I can start thinking about pushing and pulling with the "traditional" contrast / image characteristics changes;
- adding more hypo increases developer activity and contrast, bringing things to the right of the histogram so to speak. Which is a look on its own and probably quite far removed from "neutral" development.
To reverse film X, I shoot it at box speed and first go with plain PQ, paying attention to the 1) clarity of fluids dripping from film when drying, 2) highlight clarity when film is dry and 3) achieved film speed by eyeballing shadows/midtones. If it's dripping gray or black, more hypo is needed next time around. If it's dripping clear-ish, but there are specs / "grain" in highlights, a minute increase of hypo is needed the next time around. You can test for specs by wiping your drying film with fingers in a clear spot of some sacrificial frame - nothing should change in regards to unwiped area.
If I didn't achieve the advertised speed, I look up some info on film for true speed and increase dev time/hypo to arrive at it if neccessary. Nothing else gets changed. I can reverse and push/pull any film under the sun with this methodology.
I feel that this lands me on the "neutral" side of reversal, because I didn't nuke it with hypo and didn't chase the density with reduced reversal time.
