FARMER, Ernest Howard

b. 1860; d. 1944

Ernest Farmer was an English photographer who became the first Head of Photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). He invented a solution, now known as Farmer's Reducer, which reduces the intensity of a negative.

This reducer, invented in 1883, is still in use today. It consists of hypo with a small amount of ferricyanide of potash.



© Robert Leggat, 1997.