« [ PANTONE Monitor calibrator ] | Main | dpexpert.com.au is up and running... »
April 29, 2005
[ CANON PIXMA iP8500 printer ]
Price: $599
Rating: 4.5 stars
The goods: Canon’s newest printer range glories in the name of PIXMA, which possibly has something to do with maximum pixels.
The iP8500 is a high resolution printer that uses 8 ink cartridges. Red and green inks have been added to the CYMK plus photo magenta and photo cyan in the previous premium Canons.
dpexpert has sent images to the printer from Photoshop as well as direct from Canon cameras via Pictbridge and from scanned slides and black and white negatives and in every case the results are outstanding. The camera-to-printer results are so good that most people will only need to use photo editing programs to recover badly exposed pictures. We printed an A4 photograph on Canon’s best paper, Photo Paper Pro, direct from the camera and it would be hard to better the results with Photoshop fiddling. The pictures are sharp and accurately coloured.
The iP8500 also prints directly onto CD/DVD labels, using a supplementary disc tray. The Canon software is intuitive and we did not need to refer to the manual except for the action of putting the tray into the printer. Results were good, printing onto the sample TDK CD provided with the printer.
Like this: The iP8500 produces borderless prints that match photolab quality. We are still amazed at what a $600 printer can do. But …
Dislike that: Eight ink cartridges produce excellent picture quality, but at what a cost! Each cartridge costs $25 to replace and their ink capacity is miniscule. We didn’t run a page per cartidge test, but assuming that it is not different from the Canon i9100 the ink will run out faster than most people would like. There is no excuse for printer manufacturers to use such small cartridges in a moving print head. There are other, more economical, ways of storing and distributing ink.
Parting shot: The PIXMA comes with software for duplex (double-sided) printing, photo album creation, photo improvement (removing red eye and smoothing skin) and panorama stitching as well as for creating CD/DVD labels. Highly recommended.
*
Posted by terry at April 29, 2005 09:59 PM
Comments
Your comments regarding ink capacity are of course echoed by all and sundry and do not apply to just Canon who are probably one of the better manufacturers in this area (or should we be saying the "least worst" - if thats not mangling the English) However the cartridges can be purchased at various retail outlets for $22.45 and at the usual Sunday swap meets for around $17.00 (genuine Canon and within use by date). Of course all the manufacturers play the "fear factor" of a lack of longevity in using 3rd party compatibles or CIS systems backed by the fact that so little time has elapsed to prove them wrong.
What we need is a proper comparison of manufacturers inks versus 3rd party to sort out the good from the suspect and perhaps give more people confidence to use alternative products. It would also throw up the good quality 3rd party inks.
Of course the same issues apply to photo paper which is grossly overpriced. Perhaps those people turning their minds to a better mousetrap could set their sights on an ink/paper combination that would change the printing scene.
Regards,
John Smith
Posted by: John Smith at April 29, 2005 10:38 PM
Another thing I wonder about is print longevity and lack of permanence. I keep reading that the Epson Colourbrite inks' photos (not on all of their printers) last a long time - see Wilhelm-imaging.com, but the Canon inks tend to fade after 5-10 years. Is this right? (Going through the experience of scanning my slides and seeing the colour fade and distortion even of Ektachromes and of Agfa slides after 15 years makes me not want to go down a track of non-long-term-colour-fast prints). If so it makes me less enthusiastic about using the Canons.
Posted by: Mr D at May 1, 2005 10:39 PM