Canon to Release two new Printers

[mikling]

For those who have forgotten a past heated discussion about the function of grey inks in color printing and recall the naysayers whipping me up.

There exists two avenues now. Ask any owner of an Epson K3 (3 greys/blacks) and see if grey is used in color printing and the answer is definitely so. Since then, we have added many Canon Pro9500 owners AND we see that actually lots of grey ink is used in color printing on that machine as well. Coincidence? No.

Now just read this:

http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/2008_Meet_Developers/mp980/index.html

Note the words: " And, this gray ink benefits not only grayscale printing but also color printing because it is a crucial element for color photos, too. "

Since the above article, the MP990 had evolved and got a newer printhead than the 980. The newer printhead on the 990 continued over to the MG6XX20 and MG8xx20 series to date.

I might add further comments on what might be inside these printers later. It could get controversial but you would see the logic of what a Canon marketing product manager would be required to do. The key things are this. The 980/990...MG6x20 and MG8xx20 already had a larger gamut than the Pro9000 using only five colors. CMYK,Gy. The older i9900 head only had one droplet size. The 980 and newer already had smaller and larger droplet sizes than the 9000. What to do if you had to introduce something new AND these printers would not come close to the volume that would justify major new tooling...... these two printers? Canon's new Cyan and Magenta and Yellow since the CL221/521 days are interesting colors, I fully expect these to be used in the Pro-100 to advantage and this would allow the elimination of the Red and Green. Not surprising at all.

 

[mikling]

Could Canon have made a similar performing printer using only 5 tanks? I think , yes. However, if they did, the list price would have to be lower because there are so few ink tanks in the printer. Imagine a top end dye printer with only 5 tanks in total. There's no bragging rights and it would not look impressive.

I now have to get my hands on a Pro-100 because I am curious about this.

I'll be selling my Pro9000 very soon.

 

[Grandexp]

There exists two avenues now. Ask any owner of an Epson K3 (3 greys/blacks) and see if grey is used in color printing and the answer is definitely so. Since then, we have added many Canon Pro9500 owners AND we see that actually lots of grey ink is used in color printing on that machine as well. Coincidence? No.

The reason k3 ink has multi level of bk or grey is because the ink is pigment based that has a narrow gamut. Unlike like dye black ink, small droplets of black pigment ink can not produce light grey satisfactorily on paper. The dye black ink with the help of 1 pico liter droplets can produce light grey with much ease.

Note the words: " And, this gray ink benefits not only grayscale printing but also color printing because it is a crucial element for color photos, too. "

Traditional photo films never needed gray layer among RGB color layer of emulsions. The grey ink for inkjet printers is convenient and easy to implement in the printer's drivers for printing greyscale but saying it is a crucial element of color printing that is not true. In my opinion the grey inks for dye based printer is mostly by a marketing reason. The grey inks for pigment based printers are needed because of the gamut issues of the pigment based inks. Why not just CMY ink? Because the gamut for each of them is too narrow. There is no way they can produce a wide enough color range. Adding light colors and light black solves the problem.

I might add further comments on what might be inside these printers later. It could get controversial but you would see the logic of what a Canon marketing product manager would be required to do. The key things are this. The 980/990...MG6x20 and MG8xx20 already had a larger gamut than the Pro9000 using only five colors. CMYK,Gy. The older i9900 head only had one droplet size. The 980 and newer already had smaller and larger droplet sizes than the 9000. What to do if you had to introduce something new AND these printers would not come close to the volume that would justify major new tooling...... these two printers? Canon's new Cyan and Magenta and Yellow since the CL221/521 days are interesting colors, I fully expect these to be used in the Pro-100 to advantage and this would allow the elimination of the Red and Green. Not surprising at all.

Because of the smaller (1 picoliter) droplet size these printers are more pron to clogging. Pro9000s are far more durable which is a must for wide format printing. I would avoid mp980/990 and those MG cousins.

 

[Grandexp]

Any compatibles manufacturing company announced production of compatibles? I figure cartridges will be expensive as hell

Probably not until Canon reaches some volume of sales of these printers. 3rd party ink manufacturers will not produce the new ink until there is a volume demand. Now the problem is if there are no refill inks and no resetters available who will buy these printers?

 

[mikling]

This contradicts what is in the market. First off, the 980/990 does not have clogging problems in the grey channels or any other ones for that matter. Your recommendation of avoidance of the 1 picoliter would then extend ALL the way back up the channel to the iP4500...which many actually recommend here...as well as many of the current desktop units.

I am not going to start this debate of whether grey is required or not for superior color printing again. .......I've seen it and it is superior.

Canon could have offered an additional color to try and further extend the gamut and stuck with one grey rather than offer two grays in the dye. Why would they do this?

 

[fotofreek]

Because of the smaller (1 picoliter) droplet size these printers are more pron to clogging. Pro9000s are far more durable which is a must for wide format printing. I would avoid mp980/990 and those MG cousins.

Although I can't speak to the issue of the newer printers I can state from experience that the ip5000 printer with 1 picoliter nozzles has been the most trouble-free, stable printer I have used. I was initially concerned about the smaller nozzle size. A participant in another inkjet printer forum convinced me that the picture quality and trouble-free operation were excellent. I actually gave my wife my i960 (six color bci-6 carts) which was touted as one of the best color photo printers and am using an ip5000 (four bci-6 dye-based carts and one black pigment-based cart for text printing) for all my color photo printing. Side-by-side comparison of the prints, to the eye, are impossible to tell apart. Two less carts and sets of nozzles to deal with and trouble-shoot, and no problems after years of use.

Because i want to do some larger format prints I did buy a pro9000 MkII that I will soon set up. I am not looking forward to dealing with eight carts instead of four, but that's the price I'll have to pay for the larger prints. There goes the KISS principle I always try to follow!

 

[pharmacist]

Why does Canon do not make the following printer ?:

A3+ format combined with Canon MP980 printhead with Pigment black, photo black, cyan, magenta, yellow, gray ? This combines the best of both world, with a minimum of cartridges (let it be the size of the CLI-8: 13 ml and PGI-5: 26 ml) and maximum colour fidelity including true neutral black&white with the extra gray ink cartridges and each dye ink cartridge capable to produce 3 droplet sizes: 5, 3 and 1 pl. The extra pigment black enables to print full text pages on A3+ format.

 

[websnail]

Quick answer to that last based on a quote I saw today... Let me paraphrase...

Create a device that does two things. An engineer will admire its versatility. A customer will be confused.

In this instance, the photo printer market for A3 size prints is for people who want photos... They won't sully themselves printing on *gasp* plain paper in text! Oh the humanity.. Let's face it, we're pretty unique and not at all representative of the average end user...

 

[Grandexp]

Because of the smaller (1 picoliter) droplet size these printers are more pron to clogging. Pro9000s are far more durable which is a must for wide format printing. I would avoid mp980/990 and those MG cousins.

Although I can't speak to the issue of the newer printers I can state from experience that the ip5000 printer with 1 picoliter nozzles has been the most trouble-free, stable printer I have used.

Great. Canon does make good printers. What I should have said is a 1 picoliter print head is more pron to clogging than 2 picoliter or larger ones. It will certainly be more reliable for a wide format printer to be on a safer design with a 2 picoliter printer head that PRo9000 uses. The nozzle check of ip4500 I believe prints 3 blocks of cyan and magenta, one very light and one light and one slightly darker than the 2nd. I have seem such printers missing the lightest block in the nozzle check. In fact when print heads get clogged it is always the lightest color in the nozzle check being missing first. This tells that the smallest nozzles are more pron to clogging.

 

[Grandexp]

What I desire from a good photo printer is having totally saturated bright red and stunning rich yellow that are never achievable from inkjet printers with dye based ink. By adding a grey and several levels of grey/black ink it will not or never make the red and yellow more saturated. There is no way the grey ink is a crucial element for printing color photos. Marketing is marketing. Marketing people's words are just that.