Just posted: Our Canon Pixma Pro-1 printer review: Digital Photography Review

I have used the p9000mkII for over a year and it will be the last Canon printer I will ever buy. Wastes way over priced ink on every startup but my biggest gripe is the paper size limitations. It is incapable of printing an 11 x14 image natively. A simple software patch could correct many of the size limitations but Canon in its usual arrogance will not even consider it. If and when I do it again I will probably just buy an Epsom 3800.

0 upvotes

Don't buy Epsom We bought a top of the range printer Up to A2 and had nothing but problems with it The worst part was the total lack of support from the retailer and Epsom . Epsom ignored all e mails requesting assistance We paid $2000 + for the printer and eventually sold it for $700 and bought a Canon 9000 mark 11 No trouble with this!!!

0 upvotes

If I may make a suggestion to DPR's reviewers.

Along with all your other tests, would it be possible to add a test that would give us a general idea of the relationship between printer idle time and number of cleaning cycles / wasted ink needed to get it to print from all it's nozzles?

I would definitely appreciate this being a standard test along with the others for future reviews. It is relevant information for anyone in the market for a high end printer but that doesn't print constantly, as would be the case for most hobbyists.

Don't want to micromanage... but you could publish the results of all the other tests / benchmarks, then keep the printer around for a few months, trying to print after longer and longer idle times and then adding those results to the review as they become available.

Since just about all high end printers are capable of making great prints, it could be THE deciding factor for a lot of consumers on which printer they buy.

Just an idea...

2 upvotes

Ok... So do we know how long these inks can sit before drying up in the tubes completely? Thus making it a thousand-dollar paperweight?

I also want to add that I own an HP 5550 (jack-of-all-trades, master of none)... I let that little guy sit for almost a YEAR... Did *one* print-head cleaning, and started firing away 4x6 and 5x7 prints like it was fresh ink right out of the foil...

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1 upvote

I think as with any new technology the research money along with all the patent and other initial expenses to develop this new inks has to be added to recover the amounts along with some profits then it’s usually manufactured under license until these amounts and some profits are taken care of, sometimes it can be upto 500 thousand units or more after which other more competitive manufacturer’s are allowed to make it - then the price becomes a bit cheaper.
Problem is by that time, a newer model of the machine is made with some changes to the inks and the whole merry go round begins again, the older one becomes obsolete or by then have been used so much that repairs become uneconomical and so we have to go for newer machines with the newly developed inks and so ..... it really is a merry go round for us in the digital print industry.

Anit Mehta
www.ahprinters.com

0 upvotes

Hmmm...maybe it's just me but I gave up on ink jet printing 5 years ago. The cost of paper, ink, and waste of time trying to get the colours right turned me off. There are so many on-line places to order professional quality prints that for me a printer like this just doesn't make sense.

1 upvote

Am I the only one who gets annoyed at these kind of review "introductions?" Not just dpreview, but when any site announces they have a new review up, and you click on the news link, but instead of bringing you to the review, it brings you to a small description of the review saying something like "read our in-depth review to find out." it's a waste of time, and there's no need to advertise your own review because we already clicked the link, indicating we're going to read it.

4 upvotes

YES!!!!!!!!

1 upvote

They have always done this...never made sense to me.

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With those cartridge sizes Canon should do the right commercial thingy and give the printer away for free and just rip the folks off with the ink cost.

Having to change my 110ml cartridges on my Epson 7600 has been a pain sometimes over the last ten years.

One gets a printer of this type to start serious printing. Not to do the dog in the backyard frame for the grandma.

Canon wants to unite the pro quality and function with the home use inefficiency and headache and hope that the home-pro buyers will go for it.

It is therefore a great home printer.

0 upvotes

The Pixma Pro-1 printer offers excellent prints on glossy paper, especially in black and white (no color casts). However, to achieve high quality you have to create your own custom paper profiles. Prints on heavy, textured matte paper are acceptable. Forget about printing on smooth matte paper. I have tested this printer for two weeks and compared it mainly with an Epson 4880 (the same technology as the Epson 3880). Despite the nice prints on glossy paper my advice is: Buy an Epson 3880. A little more money but better prints on all types of paper (up to A2) and larger ink cartridges (80 ml vs 36 ml). Dpreview says that the ink cartridges in the Canon printer are large. That's wrong. They are too small for a printer like this. Giving it a Gold Award is almost a joke. Would have been OK if the cartridges where larger, printing on smooth matte papers better and the price about 15 percent lower.

Comment edited 46 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

You're comparing ink cartridge sizes between a 17 inch printer (3880/4880) and a 13 inch (A3+) printer (Pro-1). The Pro-1 has larger capacity cartridges than both the Epson 2880 and R3000.

2 upvotes

I have worked with fine art printing för about ten years, so I know the difference between 17 and 13 inch printers. Forget the 4880 (another league) and the 2880 (for home use). Stick to the 3880. The price difference between the Pro-1 and the 3880 is not big. Even if you just print on smaller papers, or papers up to 13 inch wide, cartridges containing 36 ml ink are to small if you don't just stick to "home printing". Also, and important, the Epson 3880 is much better for printing on all kind of matte papers. The Canon Pixma Pro-1 is a good printer, but the price is to high.

0 upvotes

At $200 difference I'd buy the 3880 in a huff. The foot print is the same. It is a 17. It has been reviewed and is used everywhere.

0 upvotes

I've actually been experimenting with my mom's Pixma MP270 which only cost her 25 euros. It's just got the usual 3 colors + black but the prints do look quite good with canon's own photo paper. Like the review of the Pro-1 mentioned I'm getting a red hue over skin tones as well.

This review is making me wonder if the difference is really that great. Yes, it can print A3 size but that's not what I'm interested in. Other than the extended color gamut I can't really see that many differences. Even the supplied photo printing software is the same.

0 upvotes

It doesn't really matter how much they cost, if the supplier can't supply them in a timely fashion... :/

0 upvotes

Ok gold award, however, you'll need a fair bit of gold for those ink tanks too.

5 upvotes

We'll be putting ours through it's paces this weekend onsite shooting and printing indoor sports as a trial run for a tournament next month.

So far our printing/imaging people are noticeably impressed with the print quality straight out of the box using (as far as I'm aware) the included paper profiles.

Now if only we could ensure our suppliers had decent ink stocks... *sigh*

0 upvotes

How about if you aren't into printing, too expensive for you, or just have negative things to say about this news item just not leave a comment? Don't you have anything better than to thrust your negativety on others?!

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If we don't put our negativeties then the companies making the items will not change according to what the customer wants from their products. Show the companies what is going wrong with their products, which is good feed back to the companies to get it right the next time.

0 upvotes

At 1300.00, this printer is for professional photographers. It wouldn't be worth it for hobbyists like myself to buy and use this printer. I never checked the costs of the inks but I can only imagine how high they are looking at the price of the printer. I just don't see how beneficial financially this can be to anyone when prints at a printer are so cheap.

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2 upvotes

As a hobbyist, you probably don't own a $1300 lens either? Sounds kind of silly calling $1300 too much when there's a chance your camera costs $1300 and/or a lens or two also costs $1300. Why buy a $1300 when the 18-55 lens comes with the camera? If you aren't into getting good products in photography, just don't comment on a news item like this. There will be LOTS of things in life that are too expensive for you. Going around and making note of them will not be good for your mental health!

4 upvotes

This printer is going to have to be massively better than the Pixma Pro 9500 to be any good. I have the PP 9500. Nearly every time I come to use it and wake it up from sleep, after spending 10 minutes cleaning the heads and p***ing away expensive ink from the tiny cartridges, it then demands for at least one cartridge to be replaced.

I reckon my ink costs on the PP9500 are close to GBP10 per A3+ print averaged out. Compared with the rather unreliable but very economical HP B9180 A3+ printer I have in France, the PP9500 is a waste of space and money.

I would need to be very convinced that Canon are not continuing to con their buyers into buying a machine that wastes 80%+ of its ink, before I considered that against the slightly more expensive to buy, Epson Stylus Pro 3880. I suspect that over say a 3 year period, the Epson would be cheaper. I have spent hundreds of pounds on PP9500 cartridges, most of which has not ever hit paper.

Wilson

5 upvotes

Here here... I was going to make a similar comment.

Haven't had a big printer in a few years, but every time I think of getting one, I remember the days of frustration and wasted inks, trying to get my Epson 2200 to print from ALL it's nozzles. Every time it hadn't printed for a day or two, I would have to go through a few cleaning cycles to get it to print correctly. Great photos, mind you, when all the nozzles were finally purged and firing as they were supposed to.... !

Why is it that my $99 Kodak all in one printer, can sit idle for anywhere between 2 days to 2 months (even about 6 months on one occasion)... and still print decent photos without it EVER asking me to go through a clean cycle, printing from ALL it's nozzles, but a $1000 printer can't print correctly without going through a costly ink wasting clean cycle (when it's not 2 or 3 cleaning cycles) every time it stays idle for more than 2 days ???

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4 upvotes

I agree of there is much waste of ink when cleaning the heads. Was the waste of ink of Planned by Canon to Make More Money on Ink ?!!!!I have an old cheap Canon and I also have to waste a lot of ink to clean the heads everytime I use the printer. You have to save all printing for one go and do the printing in a batch to save cleaning bills every time you want to print one or two prints. I still think it was Planned by Canon to sell more ink ?!!!!!

0 upvotes

I'm with you! I have given up on Canon printers over the ink usage issue. It actually would seem that every time I started it up, waited for the irritatingly long startup process and then clicked to print, I would get a low ink message. I could swear I was getting only about fifteen text pages before being told my black cartridge was empty, and since I very seldom used color, I imagined that my color cartridges were simply evaporating between uses.

I called Canon the first time, to ask if the unit had "starter" cartridges installed, and the answer was no. The second time around with cartridge replacement was my last. I junked the printer, got a Brother laser mono for text, and farmed out the color printing.

End of story.

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Yep I had the same problem with Canon printers. I don't know if it's intentional or unavoidable as they have to make sure dry ink is not clogging the nozzles. I imagine other manufacturers do the same thing to a degree, so I don't think i will ever buy an inkjet again. I use a laser printer at home and when I need prints I order them online or if I need them quick I go somewhere local.

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Good article - hope to see more articles about printers in the future.

What about the color resistans of the printed pictures of this machine?
I cant find any figure about this in the specificaton or in the article.

The colours with pigmented ink from Epson or HP printers are garanteed to be resistant between 100 - 200 years... If I remember right has not Canon printers before been able to concure with Epson or HP before about the resistans.

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Page 4 of the review under 'Print speed and longevity'

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Question: will there still be people using printers this size when 30inch 5120x3200 displays become available?

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How many 30" displays are you planning on mounting on your walls? Yeah yeah, I know, you'll just hang up one with a slide show. But others of us like to fill up the blank wall space. ;)

3 upvotes

Thanks for your reply :)

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A well framed print will last decades. How long will an LCD keep working? And an LCD like you mentioned wil probably cost in the $1500 range.

1 upvote

The inability to handle roll paper for a $1,000 printer is inexcusable. Plus they're using their old Lucia ink set instead of their newer Lucia EX inks that they use on their latest ipf6300 and ipf8300 printers. These two failings makes me think that Canon doesn't take the smaller printer market very serious.

0 upvotes

As we stated in the review, this is a new formulation of LUCIA inks. Among other things there is an additional gray dilution compared to the ipf models. In some areas, we saw a noticeable improvement in output over Canon's LF printers.

0 upvotes

The constraints to print photo by a home-use printer are:
1. Cost - variable cost is too high (ink and photo paper);
2. Speed - too slow (who would wait 3.5 minutes to print a photo?);
3. Not environmentally friendly; and
4. By experience, no home-use printer is reliable; very short life.

1 upvote

Home printing is not for everyone, but if print quality is your primary concern, you get a level of precision and control that is otherwise available only from expensive fine art print shops.
Re point #4, One huge benefit of pro-level printers like the Epson 38/48xx models and presumably the Pro-1 is that they can last for years. The lust for a new model will force you to buy long before these printer stops working.

Comment edited 26 seconds after posting

2 upvotes

I think the cost of ink has almost the same price as that of gold traded on the international market.
My local shop offered 26 cents for each 8x10 print the other day.
Why bother with this Pro-1?

1 upvote

Amadou, Might be you are right in the field of photography.
I've been in the printing and document processing industries for so many years, what I dealt with are those OCE, IBM and Xerox high speed printers. Those printers are for production purpose and for sure outside the scope of Epson, HP, Canon, Ricoh, Minolta, Toshiba... Because we are selling solutions, not just a printer, both cost (fix and variable) and speed are the concerns from most of the customers. I am wondering how come the ink is so expensive in the consumer market... and the technology of high speed printing is already available more than 10 years ago; is it really that difficult for the consumer product to catch-up the technologies in the professional side?

Comment edited 48 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

Edmond,
When Epson broke into the LF printer market, they decided to sell the hardware below cost and make their profit margins on the inks. Fine art inkjet printer industry has been that way ever since. Kodak made a go a couple of years back on low cost inks, but it didn't gain traction for photo enthusiasts.

2 upvotes

I have an R1800 that is now about 6 years old and is running great. I gave a Canon i560 to a family member which is still being used and that has to be 9 years old? Short life my ass!

1 upvote

Amadou,
That's the problem. Their strategy in keeping down the selling price of the hardware but try to get super profits from the consumable items will eventually cause customer dissatisfaction. In Hong Kong, we can buy a new HP 3-in-1 printer/scanner/copier (with 2 fully filled ink cartridges) for less than US$40, but the replacement cost of the 2 ink cartridges is US$30+.
From a consumer point of view, the manufacturer is making abnormal profit.

0 upvotes

RedFox88,
You are good luck!

Comment edited 52 seconds after posting

0 upvotes

A printer? How about a review of the 5d3 or the latest olympus u4/3 (forgot the name). Something people actually use -- I haven't used a printer for photography in the last 5 years and I honestly only know one photographer who still makes prints, out of around 50.

1 upvote

I know a lot of photographers who make their own prints. Some of them even read this site ;-)

5 upvotes

Dan4321

Just because a product has been announced (and 'reviewed' at some sites), doesn't mean production versions are yet available. If we had a 5D III, all efforts would be concentrated on it.

0 upvotes

Yes, they could do one of those silly "pre-preview hands on" things, where they photograph a Canon man holding a 5D MkIII at some event or other (it's hands-on! but not the writer's hands).

Probably get lots of pageviews; will be one more step along the path of turning DPReview into a kind of auto-generated news aggregator.

3 upvotes

There's more to photography than cameras.

2 upvotes

Really? In the camera club I belong to I am in a small minority of experienced photographers who do not make their own prints. I am still in two minds as to whether to take the printer plunge or not but there is no doubt the control, quality and the ability to use a range of fine art papers is a strong argument in favour of doing so.

0 upvotes

After an incident with an Epson I've decided to ban printers from my personal life indefinitely. I have not regretted that for a single instant.

4 upvotes

Why the paper limitation to 19" in length? It should allow you to print out 13" by whatever length of paper you have.

1 upvote

Agreed; I want to print panoramas, so this isn't the printer for me either.

Come on Canon - other manufacturer's allow panorama printing on cheaper models than this!

Theoretically I could buy the ImageProGraf, but that costs a staggering amount... So, an Epson it'll probably have to be :/

0 upvotes

It would be nice if you would include in your reviews the color gamut the printer can cover (sRBG, Adobe RGB etc). How about adding a CIE diagram?

0 upvotes

No inkjet printer can reproduce the entire gamut of even sRGB, let alone Adobe 1998. I'm not convinced how useful showing a printer vs theoretical color space gamut comparison is given that the printer gamuts are so much smaller in volume. At this point I think gamut comparisons between printers are more instructive.

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0 upvotes

That is very easy to know, go to http://www.iccview.de install the 3D plug-in for the browser and compare the printer profile against some Color Space or even the monitor profile, the 3D graphic will give the right feedback.

Comment edited 5 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

Amadou
Are you sure? Many years ago I bought Monaco profiling software. I talked to one of their "honchos". After I told him that I use an Epson 1270 printer he asked me what color space I use. "sRGB' I answered. H esaid: "the Epson 1270 can cover a larger gamut than sRGB, you really should use Adobe RBG. Who is right? He or you? I do not assume that the printer gamut has become smaller since then.

0 upvotes

Hi, Pictus,
I followed your advice, thank you very much. After getting used to the idiosyncrsies of the program I ran the program and found that the gamut of my printer (HP Z3100) in some areas exceeds even Adobe RGB, while in areas it is smaller than sRGB.The profile was generated with x-rite i1 Profiler.

Comment edited 4 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

Let me ask "dumb questions":

Why, on the one hand, do people treasure ultra high DPI density in a 9" print, or in a "Retina display," viewed at a 20" distance; while, on the other hand, the human eye cannot distinguish 1080p from 720p on a 40" HDTV at a distance of 10'?

Do we really perceive greater resolution, or merely thing we do? If the higher density resolves micro text or other features, are they comfortable to read or discern? Absent good bifocals, can older people see small stuff anyway?

Finally, on a larger print or screen, isn't on'es acute vision limited to a small swath? If people want narrow DOF or "bokeh," isn't ultra resolution irrelevant for much of the frame?

2 upvotes

"The human eye cannot distinguish 1080p from 720p on a 40" HDTV at a distance of 10'?"
Most people can do so easily.

1 upvote

Cy is correct, assuming all other aspects of the TVs are equal. Many studies have been done on this, but here is one example chart.

http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html

Comment edited 8 minutes after posting

1 upvote

Because people watch TV from a stationary place (couch), but they do come closer to prints to see the detail better. They also will scrutinize just a part of an image, not only the whole frame together. The proof of that are the people sticking their noses to the photos/prints in the museums and galleries.

So it is important that a print has detailed image down to the very shortest viewing distance, regardless of the print size.

As far as perfieral vision is concerned: in moving images we only have enough time to perceive the most important elements. The still prints, on the other hand, can be studied in detail for as long as we want to, so the quality of all areas of the print are equally important.

Comment edited 3 minutes after posting

5 upvotes

If people did look at the ipad 'retina display' from 20 inches then scaled for a 10 foot viewing distance that would make it a 58 inch 2048x1536 display, making it significantly lower density than a 40inch 1920x1080 full hd tv. And i am pretty sure most people view their tablets from closer distances than 20 inches.

The reason you need high quality across the whole display is because you can look around on it just as you can look around in a real scene to see detail on all the different objects in the scene.

Limited depth of field is an inherent flaw of photography for the same reason, in real life your eyes will refocus when you look at different objects at different distances.

Comment edited 4 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

I liked the look of this printer, I had the Canon guys print out 2 samples at Focus in Birmingham a few weeks ago. I gave them a sheet of Ilford smooth high gloss media to see if it offered any improvement over the Pro9000 dye-based machine I currently use. It came out with serious bronzing, it was only shiny on the ink. I then gave them some of hanumelle paper to see how dark it could get the blacks with a mono print. It came out with the darkest blacks being what I would call about 80% black, awful! I think the staff Canon used at the Uk's most important trade show, let the side down a bit with poor product knowledge of the machine and its software's operation.

If I print black and white on matt paper, I want blacks which look like charcoal! I have see such results on various displays at Focus, probably from an Epson. Epsons are thirsty!

From what you have suggested here, the machine is capable of great results, when set up correctly, I might yet be tempted:)

0 upvotes

A couple of points.... I have been attending trade shows for decades and I am no longer surprised that the booths are staffed by salespeople not techs.
The equipment on demo will be optimized for a narrow range of product that the techs pray wont be fiddled with by the salespeople.
By introducing media that the sales staff was unprepared for is the tech person's worst nightmare. No profile, incompatible papers can make any printer look like garbage.
Bronzing is an issue with inkjet period. The degree of bronzing being managed by media optimized for certain inksets and with correct profiling.

I have printed professionally for over twenty years and I can attest to the fact that current printers are better than ever and, properly configured, are almost indistinguishable from each other.

2 upvotes

Buchan-Grant,
From what you describe, the prints were likely made at 'standard' print quality with the Auto option selected for the clear coat. Setting the chroma optimizer to print over the entire image gives significantly better results in reducing bronzing. As Photomonkey alluded to, you don't often see the best results from a printer at a tradeshow (I'm being diplomatic).

Comment edited 2 minutes after posting

0 upvotes

My Canon Pixma 4000 ink cartridges dry up quickly.
The prints are nice but home printing with ink printers is far more expensive (because of drying-up) in comparison with what specialized (non-drugstore) printing shops charge. No more ink printers for me.

1 upvote

Sounds very impressive. Wish I'd been near a location where they were offering the free sample print demo. Looks like you really struggled for a 'cons' list!

0 upvotes

Excellent work DPR.

Great to see a printer being tested here.

This looks like a lovely piece of kit. Probably my favourite new piece of Canon kit right now !

We all need reminding that photography is not about pixel peeping and staring at sections of still life test photos at 25600 ISO.
Photography is about showing your favourite images. Putting them on the wall and grinning at how awesome they look.

This printer looks like the perfect piece of kit to achieve this.

Comment edited 33 seconds after posting

5 upvotes

Nice printer, shame about the size. I don't need an A3 photo printer, so can Canon come up with something with the same quailty but smaller so that I can update my HP8450.

0 upvotes


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Just posted: Our Canon Pixma Pro-1 printer review

Canon Pixma Pro-1

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