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New Canon Pixma Pro 100 Printer


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After struggling for some time to get my images printed by some of the online shops, I finally decided to get one of the Canon Pixma Pro 100 dye inkjet printers before all of their rebates & discounts expired. The Pro 100 got good reviews from Northlight Images & Imaging Resources, plus the Wirecutter rated it as their value runner up to their recommendation to get the Epson P600 pigment inkjet printer. For my planned printing needs, I just couldn't justify spending many times the cost of the Canon to get the Epson. Also the archival ratings of Canon's new dye inks are substantially improved over the old ones that would start fading almost right after printing! And at B&H in addition to their $100 discount off Canon's Price, they threw in 50 sheets of 13X19 semi gloss paper that they sell for $75. So the net price of the printer was far less than I would have to pay currently for the Epson P600, making it a much better choice for me.

Also a couple months ago I worked at a photo festival & got a number of packets of fine art papers from Canson, Canon & Epson. So that will give me a good test batch to try out while getting used to the printer. I have the ColorMunki monitor calibrator & hopefully with downloading the right printer profiles for the papers being used, the color management will turn out at least as good, & hopefully better than I was getting sending my images out for printing. And if anyone out their has any experience with the Red River papers, I would appreciate hearing about it. They get some very good reviews as a reasonably priced quality product.  But after printing a couple of test prints on letter size paper today, I printed a B&W image on the 13X19 Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss & am very pleased with the image, even before it is fully dried.  

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After struggling for some time to get my images printed by some of the online shops, I finally decided to get one of the Canon Pixma Pro 100 dye inkjet printers before all of their rebates & discounts expired. The Pro 100 got good reviews from Northlight Images & Imaging Resources, plus the Wirecutter rated it as their value runner up to their recommendation to get the Epson P600 pigment inkjet printer. For my planned printing needs, I just couldn't justify spending many times the cost of the Canon to get the Epson. Also the archival ratings of Canon's new dye inks are substantially improved over the old ones that would start fading almost right after printing! And at B&H in addition to their $100 discount off Canon's Price, they threw in 50 sheets of 13X19 semi gloss paper that they sell for $75. So the net price of the printer was far less than I would have to pay currently for the Epson P600, making it a much better choice for me.

 

Once you've been printing for a while, you'll recognize that printer manufacturers....all of them...make their profits off the inks, not the printers, which are routinely heavily discounted (if you miss a discount, wait a few minutes).  Dealer discounts can often be combined with company rebates.

 

You bought a fine printer, and it should serve you very well.  Consider for cost comparison purposes that it has 13ml cartridges, compared to 25.9ml for the P600, and 80ml for the P800.  Remember too, that there is still a fair amount of ink left in the cartridges when the low ink light flashes (about 20% on yours), and still when it stops printing (about 7% on yours).  Same basic deal with Epson.  And nozzle checks/head cleans will use ink.  

 

Your real costs over the long term will relate to cost per print, which will vary by print size, b/w vs color, etc.   Inks also last a lot longer than manufacturers have you believe (again, they want folks to buy new inks)....just run a test print through at least every few weeks if your machine has been idle (and, if longer, gently shake the cartridges).  I always run a nozzle check before a major print session.   

 

I recently bought a P800 with $300 in rebates, making it roughly the same cost as a P600 at retail.  I'll pay, on average, about .68 cents per ml when buying inks....you'll pay about $1.19 per ml., apples to apples, given the cartridge sizes.  And my machine came loaded with about 5 times more ink, if you're comparing costs (less of course when compared to the P600). Both Epson and Canon typically throw in some free paper.....Epson does that so of course you'll be inclined to buy more of their paper going forward (the other ongoing source of profits). 

 

Be sure when you download (or buy) profiles, if they're not custom made using color charts from your own printer and paper, that many profiles are created based on pigment inks, not dyed based as the Pro 100.  You may want to experiment in any case.  [And if you're running on a Mac and decide to print your own charts for profiles, be sure to use the Adobe color print utility to avoid color management issues).

 

Congrats on making your own prints.  You should run lower costs, and higher print quality, compared to outside services....once you get your workflow sorted using quality papers.

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeff S
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I have the pigment A3+ size Canon Pixma Pro-1. It is a totally horrible machine, which I also bought after reading Northlight's review. If I knew where he lived, I would go and throw it through his window. Every time I switch it on, it goes through a very lengthy and noisy head cleaning routine, which empties one or more of its very expensive ink carts. When it does print, the colours are  too dark and over-saturated compared with the screen image (profiled), so you need to mentally compensate for this. It also has the world's fussiest paper feed and pretty much refuses to feed matt paper altogether and will not feed 6" x 4" or 5" x 7" of any variety. It was an expensive waste of money.

 

In contrast I have an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 (A2 size) in France, which I bought as a factory refurb, for about the same as I paid for the Pro-1. It is a brilliant machine. It wastes very little ink head cleaning from its much larger carts and the end results look just like they do on screen. I have a set of Piezography spare ink carts, which I fill with Piezoflush head cleaning fluid for when I leave it over the winter. Again this worked perfectly and after going through the changeover routine, I got a 100% result on a head test with colour inks. It feeds all varieties and permitted sizes of paper perfectly and you can adjust the patten gap remotely on the remote control panel. I wish I had bought another 3880 instead of the useless Canon. 

 

Wilson

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Jeff S, thanks for the encouragement & useful info, & wlaidlaw, so very sorry to read of your troubles with the Pro 1 printer.  So far my experience has been just the opposite, a very quite printer with no unplanned head cleaning, with output that matches what I see on my calibrated monitor when softproofing with LR6.  With black & white I have had to increase contrast a bit to match up with the on-screen image, but all in all, it has been a very satisfactory printer.  And thus far the four or five prints I have made are much sharper, more saturated & cleaner in their appearance than what I was getting when using the White House Custom Color folks (although they were way better than my local Costco).

 

However, a quick question if I might.  When setting up the printer profiles for the Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss, the paper choices actually showed two versions of this paper (#1/2 & #3).  Possibly this was for either dye or pigment inks, so I opted for the #1/2 alternative, & it came out fine.  Of course, I didn't try printing another one with the #3 option, so who knows what that might have produced.  I have searched online generally & on the Canon site, but cannot find anything that addresses this.  Possibly this is just an example of the color management experimenting that may be needed.  But I am ready to start printing on some of the non-Canon papers once I download their profiles, & expect that it won't be long before I will be buying more of the smaller ink cartridges that are the downside of this entry wide format printer.

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However, a quick question if I might.  When setting up the printer profiles for the Canon Photo Paper Plus Semi Gloss, the paper choices actually showed two versions of this paper (#1/2 & #3).  Possibly this was for either dye or pigment inks, so I opted for the #1/2 alternative, & it came out fine.  Of course, I didn't try printing another one with the #3 option, so who knows what that might have produced.  I have searched online generally & on the Canon site, but cannot find anything that addresses this.  Possibly this is just an example of the color management experimenting that may be needed.  But I am ready to start printing on some of the non-Canon papers once I download their profiles, & expect that it won't be long before I will be buying more of the smaller ink cartridges that are the downside of this entry wide format printer.

 

A brief search suggests that these numbers may be the print quality settings associated with your print driver.....1, 2 or 3....In which case I believe the lowest number represents highest quality.  I didn't spend much time, but you might want to research.

 

In any event, you can always email or call Canon tech support for any questions...contacts likely in your user manual.  A thorough read of your manual, if you haven't already, could be useful for other helpful hints to get the best from your machine, e.g., you might be able to fine tune your print head alignment by printing some charts and changing some settings.  I did this with my Epson P800 out of the box, but various other printers likely have a similar option.....tolerances vary and things shift in shipment.

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeff S
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A brief search suggests that these numbers may be the print quality settings associated with your print driver.....1, 2 or 3....In which case I believe the lowest number represents highest quality.  I didn't spend much time, but you might want to research.

 

 

You are right; they relate to print quality with 1 being the highest.  Here is what I found online:

 

Canon ICC Profile Labels

When you need to specify an ICC profile, specify the ICC profile for the paper to print on. The ICC profiles provided by Canon appear as follows.

icc_profile_display.jpg
  • (1) Printer model name
  • (2) Print quality

    This corresponds to the Custom slider of Print Quality in the printer driver and application. The lower the number, the finer the quality.

  • (3) Media type

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In my experience the Pro-100 produces good prints using the "color management by printer" setting in Lightroom. In effect, the printer seems to analyze the picture and set tedious color management and white balance parameters automatically, doing a highly creditable job. As I recall, one of LuLa's printing experts (Mark Segal? Jeff Schewe?) has even endorsed this heretical workflow, at least for oeuvres not destined for the MOMA.

 

The small dye ink cartridges are cost-effective enough for occasional printing, because the heads don't clog. Not so efficient for high volumes.

 

Setup software, unfortunately, is abysmal. As a long-suffering veteran of the traumatically unreliable HP B9180, however, I managed it.

Edited by graphlex
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In my experience the Pro-100 produces good prints using the "color management by printer" setting in Lightroom. In effect, the printer seems to analyze the picture and set tedious color management and white balance parameters automatically, doing a highly creditable job. As I recall, one of LuLa's printing experts (Mark Segal? Jeff Schewe?) has even endorsed this heretical workflow, at least for oeuvres not destined for the MOMA.

 

The small dye ink cartridges are cost-effective enough for occasional printing, because the heads don't clog. Not so efficient for high volumes.

 

Setup software, unfortunately, is abysmal. As a long-suffering veteran of the traumatically unreliable HP B9180, however, I managed it.

 

What a pity that HP never sorted the B9180 and brought out a reliable B9181. When it worked it was very good and economical. I had 5 warranty replacements over the three year extended warranty period, and as each came with a new set of cartridges, I never bought a single new cartridge in the 5 years I had it. HP must have lost a fortune on that model. In typical HP fashion, rather than sort the problems and keep the good bits, they exited the business - no staying power. That was the printer I replaced with the Canon Pixma Pro-1, which I would not wish on my worst enemy, after it became very difficult to source new in date print heads for the HP. There were plenty of long dated old unused heads around but I had to send back a few of those when they would not fire up.

 

I hope the new Epson P series replacements for the 3880 and 4880 are as bullet proof as the much loved predecessors, which together with the larger 7880 and 11880 printers, are the workhorses of many professional photographers. 

 

Wilson

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I hope the new Epson P series replacements for the 3880 and 4880 are as bullet proof as the much loved predecessors, which together with the larger 7880 and 11880 printers, are the workhorses of many professional photographers. 

 

 

 

There is no SureColor P series model to replace the 4900, which has been a problematic machine (the 4800/4880 were better).  On the 17" end, there's the P600, which replaces the sometimes problematic R3000, and the P800, which of course replaces the 3880.  It's not clear if or when there will finally be a 4900 alternative.

 

Epson was careful to note that the P800 uses the already successful and proven reliable 3880 platform.  Improvements were added to the inks primarily (hence the name SureColor, so of course they could market all new ones), and to the feed mechanisms (including better front feed and added roll feed), along with some other tweaks. They didn't want to screw up and have another 4900 on their hands.

 

I mentioned Epson reliability when I had my 3800, which was terrific, but you went in a different direction.   :o

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeff S
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Roll feeds are a device best avoided IMHO. I had a roll feed on my Epson R1800. It went wrong, so I summoned the Epson service guy. He came down after an hour working on the printer and said "I will have to take it away back to base." I said that they were supposed to provide a temporary replacement on the service contract I had bought. He did not have one on the van, so I told him to leave my R1800 until he could supply a replacement. "Oh but it is not working at all now, so there is no point in leaving it"- grrrrrrr. Then to add insult to injury, when I went up to my digital darkroom, where it lived, I found he had destroyed three new rolls of 11" wide paper, with the edges all chewed up and had not mentioned this but just put them back in their boxes, as if he had not touched them. It took months of arguing with Epson to get them replaced. I understand from my son-in-law's father, who has 4880, 7880 and 11800 printers, that the engineers who service the pro level printers are a wholly superior level of technician and really know what they are doing. His workshop is always full of prints being flattened out. 

 

Wilson

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The roll feed on the P800 is optional....and, by all reports, it does the job for those who want it.  I wouldn't begin to compare the P800 to the R1800.

 

The 7880 was replaced by the 7900, and it experienced clog issues similar to the 4900.  So much for superior results with all wide printers...or even with all new models.  The replacement SC P7000 24" printer is expected to perform better....we'll see.

 

One needs to research each iteration.  I typically wait for user reviews regarding reliability before considering any purchase.  The only reason I was an early adopter on the P800 was because it was based on the 3880 platform, which had already proven itself (as had the 3800, which I already owned).  A bit of a risk, but so far, so good.

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeff S
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The roll feed on the P800 is optional....and, by all reports, it does the job for those who want it. I wouldn't begin to compare the P800 to the R1800.

 

I have the role feed mechanisms for the Epson R2300 and R2880 printers which amount to a few pieces of kit that gave me so little confidence that until a recent clear out I thought they had long since been bined. The role feed for the P800 is a serious piece of kit. Very well made and with an appropriate price tag.Epson where giving a roll of paper worth about £85 with it when I bought mine.All you need extra is a pair of wall paper scissors

BrianP

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