New Canon Printers Announced

[virginia]

So what do you guys think of the three new canon printers announced, two with pigment inks and one with new dye ink, supposed to be more archival for photographs?

 

[alchemist]

Canon has been losing sales to Epson over their exagerated claims of 200 year print life with the K3 pigmented ink and papers. Canon is more realistic with their claims for image life expectancy and now we have some real choices from a long establihed camera company. It will not be too long before the high quality paper and ink companies provide us with more options.

Alchemist

 

[Osage]

What disturbs me about the Canon marketing is two things. (1) While its great that Canon is working to improve inkjet technology, Canon is doing it in responce to Epson hype rather than reality---marketing to the unwashed masses---while at the same time so inept as to miss the fact US users would like CD printing factory enabled. Its certainly apparent --at least to me--that what drives Canon design is not the quest for better printers but rather new printers that are better able to lock in Canon profits.
(2) Each small incremental change will be hooked to chips that effectively lock out third party vendors from the marketplace---the new Canons already locks out vendors of third party pre-filled cartridges--and makes refilling less attractive in that ink monitoring is lost--and the average user won't find web sites that tell them how to get around the nag screens. But Canon has learned the Epson lesson and made their first generation chip hard to crack. So I am betting that each new small incremental Canon ink improvement will be tied to a new printer and won't be backward compatable to
earlier models----and if this is the case---it would be foolish for Canon to rush technology when its better to creep up on it and milk it as much as possible. To per say blame Canon is also foolish----it clear that all printer manufacters are doing this and it will be the dominant future trend.

Alchemist alluded to various third party manufacters starting to compete--the handwriting is on the wall---their survival is at stake. There is probably not much to gain in improving actual ink jet printing---the new battleground is archival inks and papers.-----that makes home photoprinting affordable and long lasting. The focus of these forums has been largely on the affordable----and OEM printers will in future likely attempt to trade affordable for long lasting. And in the quest for both,
the only hope will be in third party vendors is my contention.

I have seen previous posts saying third parties are capable of delivering better archival inks---but at a price double todays's prices---as I recall, I previously costed out Canon price for usable ink in a BCI-6 cartridge at about $4300 per gallon. ---and high quality--at least in terms of OEM color match and usability---costs some thing on the order of $100 for the same gallon when bought in quanity from a third party vendor----and now they threaten to double that to $200.----big deal--instead of saving $4200/gallon I only save $4100--and that assumes Canon won't increase their ink price on better ink. Likewise better papers offer the same hope---and the same marketing potential by an OEM printer maker to make improvements small, slow, and incremental.

Happily, the third party vendor is under no such marketing parameters---they need
to do the R&D to get a better product to market---and if they have that better mousetrap it translates into sales----------we already have a crowded third party market competing on price-----what we need is a vigorous third party market competing on archival quality also.------and its time both we and those vendors wake up and see that future trend.