Hi Terry,

Thank you for another wonderful review.

Apparently Canon will release the Pixma Pro 9500 sometime this year which, uses, "a 10-colour ink system featuring new formulation 'LUCIA' pigment ink". I certainly hope Canon gives you a very early opportunity to test a unit.

I was wondering which printer you prefer (mainly regarding colour print quality), the Epson Stylus Photo R2400 or the Pixma 9000?

Tony:

They are both superb printers. I have identical prints made from each and when I put them side by side they look the same.

Close inspection shows a slight edge in resolution for the Canon against a richness for the Epson. Theoretically the Epson prints should have longer life -- but you won't be around to see the difference. We are talking the difference between a 100 year print and a 120 year print life.

Buy either with confidence.

Terry L

Hello Terry,
Some of your readers may be interested in a quote for the Pro9000 and accesories that I obtained from my "preferred supplier", Rob Dogrusever of Inprintations, 12 Princes Highway, Dandenong [ph.9 794 8822]
Rob quoted me a price of $962 for the printer. $22 for the OEM carts at the shop and $19 for the same carts at the stall he has at the weekly Computer Swap Meets that are conducted around the suburbs. He said the cost of the carts would come down in time as Canon tried to match the price of the compatibles as they appeared on the market.

He also sells the fine art rag paper at $17 for a 20 sheet pack of A4 [by the way the paper is made by Hahnemuhle which is a name at the top of the fine art paper manufacturers.

I have no affiliation with Rob. He gives me nothing other than good service and lots of sound and honest advice.He is happy for his name to be mentioned but did not ask me to do it.

Feel free to edit this if you think its sounds like an advertisment, or indeed not to use it at all, but like yourself, my major beef with most of these printers is the ongoing cost of cartridges and paper and where I can find a good price [and Rob's price on OEM cartridges - particularly from the market stall are as cheap as you can find] I like to share the information.

Keep up the excellent reviews.

John Smith

Hi Terry,

I have just noticed that Canon now have the Pixma Pro 9500 listed on their Australian products page.

I would be very interested in your opinion of that printer should you have the opportunity to trial it.

The RRP is $1399 and I have already seen it for $1148 on line.

I do hope that this printer lives up to expectations for both colour and b/w printing.

Tony.

Tony:

The media presentation of the Pixma Pro9500 is happening in Sydney this week. Unfortunately I can't be there, but as soon as they can get a review sample to me in Melbourne I will post an assessment here.

TL

Hi Terry,

I recently bought the Pro9000, to a very large extent based on very high recommendations from various review sites, mainly photo-i, but also yours.

I too was excited about this printer, but not for too long.

I am not a pixel peeper, I don't even know what Y axis on the infra red chroma is.

But I can see when colors are incorrect, or when details are missing in shadow areas. I am referring to printing from Photoshop, using the "canned" Canon profiles. On many if not most images (saturated reds, greens and blues) they give very poor results, and need additional corrections to be added. In some cases the small gamut of the profile does not allow these corrections to be done in Photoshop proper. They have to be done on top of it in the Easy Photo Print Pro or in the driver. This should not be necessary with a Pro printer. It wastes a lot of paper and ink before you get the right result. You should be able to have a reliable softproof, but with these profiles this is not possible. If the printer is capable of printing certain colors, the profiles should not restrict it.

I have since downloaded Pro9000 profiles from other manufacturers of photo paper - Red River, Ilford and MOAB. They give better results.

I am convinced that the Pro9000 is capable of printing good colors with good profiles.
I believe Epson has recently? produced and made available enhanced profiles for their printers and papers. Canon should do the same. A little bit of push from more critical reviews would go a long way towards this goal.

Anyway, I still enjoy reading your columns in the Green Guide.

Joe

Joe: I know what you are talking about. I have spent many days and lots of dollars agonising over print output compared with the image on the monitor. This is not pixel peeping.

In the end I came to a realisation -- profiles provided by manufacturers only work if my monitor is adjusted exactly the same as theirs. And what is the chance of this? Not great, I suspect.

So I did this. I decided to stick with one paper type -- I have a Canon i9950, a predecessor of yours even though its number is higher -- and generally speaking I only use Photo Paper Plus Glossy, thereby eliminating a variable.

Then I loaded the Canon Profile and, bracing the credit card against serious assault, I set out to use the Manual Colour Intensity and turn on ICM. I set paper size, borderless etc and started to make small adjustments until I got the print that I wanted, and then I saved the whole parameter set as my own custom profile. [Have you noticed that there is a Profile tab in the Print dialogue box? That's where you save and retrieve profiles.]

It was painful, but it worked. Now I am pretty confident that every time I press the Print button I will get what I want to get from the printer.

I'd be intereste to hear how you get on. I reckon that the key to getting good prints is to eliminate as many variables as possible -- which means mainly the paper type.

I also calibrate my monitor using Huey, a reasonably priced doodad that plugs into a USB port and makes the monitor adjustments objectively. I never could come to grips with the Adobe Gamma thing.

Hope this helps and I'd be interested to hear how you get on. It really is a good printer -- better, in my opinion, than any of the pigment printers.

TL

Terry,

thanks very much for responding to my post.

Regarding your workaround for poor printer/paper profiles, I understand completely what you do and how you save your own printer profile. This is easy with the Pro9000 and the Easy Photo Print Pro plug-in for Photoshop. I will have to do the same until I find the courage to confront my wife to approve some $US500 to buy good spectrocolorimeter to be able to produce my own profiles. I am already spending $US180 for the Eye-one Display 2 colorimeter to calibrate/profile my LCD screen. I do not believe it is out a lot, but these days, if you complain about a printer, the first question anybody asks is: have you calibrated your monitor?

There is also the possibility of having a custom profile made for my printer/paper combination, for which people charge around $US40-50. I am not sure if anybody in Melbourne provides this service.

But Terry, it hurts a lot to spend close to $900 for what Canon call a professional printer, only to realise that I can't use it in a professional workflow, i.e. using the profile for a reliable softproof in Photoshop and then hit the Print button.

Canon have put a lot of energy into developing drivers, applications and plugins to make all sorts of adjustments, use "Photo Color", "Linear Tone", "Vivid" etc. These produce "wow" prints, but are fakes to some degree. If you read the documentation, you will see. For starters, they convert all images into the lowest common denominator, sRGB. On the other hand, they make it easy for people who don't care about color spaces and Photoshop to get nice prints.

For the "professional" Pro9000 and Pro9500, Canon should do the right thing and make or get somebody to make for them good paper profiles, like Epson has done.

The poor quality of Canon's profiles has been reported by PopPhoto and at least two other review sites. Unfortunately the very influential photo-i did not bother to report on this, but rather concentrated on the workaround.

At the end of the day, I would not consider taking the Pro9000 back, but it leaves a very sour taste. I will most definitely be very careful before buying a Canon product in the future.

Joe

Joe: There is a place in Melbourne that calibrates printers and produces profiles. It is AIM in Station Street, Box Hill. The chap to ask for is Russell.

However I think it might be expensive.

I agree with your general complaint. It ought not be so difficult to get printer output that matches the monitor. Some manufacturer has to come up with a solution to this problem. It is not only Canon printers that are frustrating -- they all are. And guessing how to set the parameters in the printer dialogue box is a nightmare.

TL

Hello, thank you to everyone that has contributed to these great discussions! I am upgrading from my faithful Canon S800 A4 printer to a Canon Pixma Pro 9000/Epson R1900/Epson R2400. After reading many reviews and discussions, I am still quite unsure which of these printers is going to be the all-encompassing work-horse for the amateur photographic enthusiast. I tend to print on ILFORD Classic Pearl Paper if this should be a consideration of one printer over the other. Also, I like the idea of being able to print a wide landscape print. Can the canon printers achieve this without a roller attachment? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.