Canon Pro-1000 A2 printer: considering buying this beast

[pharmacist]

After a few years of having Epson printer, I consider to buy this beast of a printer.

Are there any culprits concerning refilling, resetter and aftermarket inks? The last year it was very busy for me and I did not engage much in refilling and printing.

Please enlighten me .

 

[The Hat]

Please enlighten me

@pharmacist, think long and hard about getting the Pro 1000, it’s not a cheap printer to purchase and certainly not cheap to run either, even with 3rd party inks, it has a more advanced AI then the Pro 1 has, so is not very obliging when you try and tinker with it.

If your planning on selling your photos and using only OEM inks in her, then you’ll find no better printer on the market, it’s when you try to take it out of its own comfortable environment, the trouble starts, another thing not mentioned, it drinks ink just for the hell of it...

 

[mikling]

Then again, you can real information by checking Jose Rodriguez on Youtube and joining his facebook page on the Pro-1000 which has I hear 700+ participants. Get real user experiences. It is not a printer for the masses and some participants here have not kept up with serious ink options for this machine and the Canon Pro Pigment series as well. The landscape has changed dramatically since the fall of 2017. There is refilling and there is serious refilling.

In the same vein that a 911 is not a car for the masses. KNOW who you are and what you want out of it. It is a landmark printer and the best always comes with a price.

Like all sophisticated machines, Canon made a few errors when they first brought this machine out. It appears that these have been sorted out and the early reports of drinking ink is possibly related to the machines with the error which Canon will happily replace with a totally new machine. Just know that some early machines were actually defective and would act weird.

 

[The Hat]

some participants here have not kept up with serious ink options for this machine

I gave my up to date honest and Unbiased opinion of this great printer to @pharmacist and have no vested interest in supporting Canon or any others, and may I leave it at that...

 

[mikling]

The Pro-1000 should NOT be your first printer. It is really for the perfectionist at heart and has the expertise to wring out what it can provide. It is possibly best suited for the user who has owned at least two photoprinters. It is definitely a printer for the person who has mastered color management and understand what is necessary to accomplish the best prints. If you've owned earlier dye printers, owned an Epson K3 machine and then want to see what is beyond then consider this machine.
It is not that I have vested interests because I also have a K3/HD Signature Inkset for the Epson machines as well and also soon a EV6 Signature ink which addresses the black issue and provides excellent color matching with Epson OEM Claria not seen before. Additonally, if you want to push the boundaries of pigment ink with Gloss/Chroma Optimizer then this machine should be considered. If you are anxious about running costs then this machine is not for you. Even for those who want to stick with OEM because they simply want the best. There is a solution that can reduce running costs and give up NOTHING in performance when refilling.

The Pro-1000 is misunderstood, it is actually a desktop sized wide format machine for the printing aficionado. If you purchase a high performance sports car and asks if it requires premium, then the machine is not for you. Premium allows more performance because it has a denser caloric content to begin with.

The other thing is that any machine that has more nozzles will require more maintenance ink volume it is simple as that. That applies to Epson as well as Canon. Imagine you have ONE nozzle per channel, to maintain that nozzle will require far less ink than if you had 512 nozzles. Does that make sense? I thought so. Why more nozzles? to provide more combinations among all colors allowing smoother gradations. Remember that color management math assumes you have an infinite number of combinations and thus an infinite number of nozzles. The math does not know you are working with a limited number of nozzles. More nozzle combinations - better images- because you are following the math closer and like any machine....there reaches a point where there are decreasing returns and to push the boundaries requires higher requirements hardware wise and higher costs. This machine is pushing boundaries.

Canon will not explain that but that is where this machine is at. The Pro-10 can give you close to the performance for a lot less money a fraction of the cost. Therein lies the aspect of diminishing returns, the Pro-10 is better suited for most people. For some, they gotta HAVE it. It's like High End Hi Fi it is simply not worth the cost until you experience it and can afford it.

The irony to this printer is thus, it is simply so easy to refill that nearly anyone can do it. It is even easier to refill than a $29 printer and you can get OEM ink to do it as well.
So even for those wanting to stick with OEM, why would you not refill if you are a refiller at heart?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBFb0GRS32o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzUPvqQ_gnI

 

[Emulator]

From mikling's comments, it looks like the ideal machine, it even made me read some of the reviews on the net.

The only doubt was the possibility that it is a slow printer, due to all the "thinking" that it seems to do before it actually prints anything.

P.S. and it doesn't do 3D.

 

[mikling]

I was watching a video on Youtube last evening and I stumbled upon one where a couple guys were comparing FLACs which are lossless compressed audio files and high bit rate MP3s at 320kps. Their conclusion was that there was no difference and that people storing audio files as FLACs were wasting disk space. Well I wish they were right but the problem they had was that their source material was inadequate to show the difference and more importantly the electronics that they were using was not up to the task of resolving the differences. Simple fact, despite the naysayers. On a high end system you can hear the difference between a high quality MP3 and a FLAC file on more demanding sound files or tracks. It's somewhat simple because I have hit this many times. I now use reading glasses and it would not matter much if I shot a picture with a high quality lens or a poor one if my reading glasses was all foggy. Follow my explanation the glasses are like the electronics and speakers you would listen through. The tracks are like the images.

If I was to watch a pure patch of color, even my foggy glasses would reveal all because there is not much to reveal I see the color. If I captured a complex image with a high quality lens, but then I watched it with my foggy glasses, it would look the same as if I captured it with a poor lens through my foggy glasses. However, if I cleaned my glasses, then I could see the difference.That is why you need high resolution systems but they can also reveal bad err terrible recordings.

This is where it stumbled on me what the situation with printers like the Pro-1000 is at. If you like to shoot JPEGs, do not like to capture RAW and manage the image in a RAW processor then maybe printers like the Pro-1000 is not really your cup of tea. Given a very demanding image, and having excellent profiles for your output combination can yield stunning results...but you need to be in that game just like example I outlined above. You will need to know at what level you want to be in the hobby...all printers are good enough but some allow you to bring more resolution to the image....not sharpness per se but in tonal gradations. So it is like a question of do you think you can hear the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed file and secondly, do you care? Same is a high quality printed image that the vast majority of people be satisfied with sufficent or do you want want something that is slightly better but most would not know the difference but yourself and a few others?

That is completely a personal question only the reader can answer.

 

[Flying Scotsman]

@mikling The landscape has changed dramatically since the fall of 2017. There is refilling and there is serious refilling.

Could you please expand on this statement I am always looking for the best ink when I am refilling. I would like to find ink that doesn't suffer from fading and all the other problems you find when using 3rd party inks. I think i am serious about refilling so am I missing something.

 

[WilsonLaidlaw]

A number of the large format Canon printers are notorious for feed drive line problems, failing gears and other small parts, often made from nylon or other plastic. There is a reason most professional photographers stick to Epson for large format printers, notwithstanding the head blocking problems. The mid format Canons are known for excessive ink use on cleaning cycles and unlike the Epson Stylus Pro and Surecolor printers, they don't have user replaceable ink dumps/service tanks. Again I would say stick to Epson, with whom I have no connection other than a satisfied customer.

 

[palombian]

IMO the PRO-1000 has a replaceable service tank.

I know I am not the person for this printer, a PRO-10 would be enough.
Sadly the nylon gears of my PRO-9500's are still in working order.

With 3th party ink the ink consumption for cleaning is not such an issue. It is very effective, a Canon pigment printer seldom clogs.

The major advantages of Epsons seem to me that you do not need to change printheads and you can use roll paper.