2006 seems about right...if one is referencing when the BIG DOOR shut on wet process, silver/gelatin photography.
Let me tell you what I mean; from my own perspective.
It must have been in 1998 or 1999 (while I was still working at Sprint Systems of Photography) when the principals asked me to go down to the big Photo Expo in NYC; at the Jacob Javitz Center. Sprint, in those days, was always a kind of Mom and Pop shop but we thought we were productive at a very high level and we believed we supplied good products in a system that was convenient to all but especially to teachers in a classroom setting. We had a really good rapport with the schools we did business with.
I travelled to the show with another person who worked at Sprint. When we got settled in to the show we really noticed that some of our biggest customers were rather busy and had little time for us. This seemed strange but it was obvious that our customers were really being honest...it was nothing personal. We got word that most of our customers were in lectures or marketing promotions related to digital photography.
I have to admit that this fact caught me a bit off guard. I knew about digital photography (hadn't really touched anything digital at that point) but considered it too clumsy and expensive at that point.
I can tell you, when I got back from that trip I began to read up on what digital cameras were capable of doing and the process that generated prints within that medium. The inkjet printers and the inks that were available at that time seemed to be less than ideal and the cameras were still expensive for what they seemed to be able to do...1999...give me that Hasselblad and some fine grained film...process it in a phenidone rich, lower Ph developer and I felt confident that wet process still had an advantage...back then.
I did write up a report that lay out the stark reality for Sprint. Whereas the usual curriculum for a student studying photography would have been to be 85 .per cent wet process, silver halide and 15 .per cent digital as finishing courses as they went out the door...the new order would soon be the inverse of that scheme...wet photo process becoming the final kiss in case the young, aspiring, photographer might wish to know how they did it in the good old days. Digital was coming on like a freight train.
I began work on a product that I would have liked to call "Scantastic"; basically a developer for providing high quality negatives for scanning. I also proposed that Sprint begin to consider going in to the ink business for digital prints. I went up to the Jon Cone Studio in Topsham VT to try to get a handle on these ideas.
At that time I had the ear of a friend who was respected in the world of photography and it seemed natural for me to solicit his advice on these matters. He had done all manner of printing, from photogravure, lithographs, platinum...you name it. He had also done printing for Walker Evans and Lee Friedlander and others of that ilk. At the time he was the dean of the Art School at Yale.
When I asked him about my aims he just smiled. He was perennially busy and disliked wasting time. He just told me that I was about trying to piss up a rope and that, already, the CCD's were getting better (and cheaper) and the dynamic range of the digital captures so far exceeded anything film was capable of that the writing was already writ large on the proverbial wall.
I still think that if I was embarking on a serious project that relied on high quality photographs, I would load up the right choice of camera and film and print wet process. Digital is really convenient, easy, and often never intended for prints...just see it on your screen and move on.
Bye the way...I have never bought a digital camera. I inherited a second generation Kodak 3900 when my brother died in 2007 and I used the hell out of it. I can't tell you how many people loved my images to the point where they would tell me that I would be a much better photographer if I had a BETTER camera. I always figure any camera in my hands is way more capable of capturing an image than I am capable of composition/exposure decisions.
Just after that camera died a cousin of mine gave me a great Sony Alpha model that I'm still using.
There's something insidious and misleading about computers and digital media...read the licensing agreements...ask yourself if your computer died (or if YOU died and nobody had you access password) where would your images exist??
So, I do think that around 2006 the combination of capable computers and digital cameras was overwhelming wet process to the point where almost everyone was switching over.
My 2 cents.
