New Photo Printer required - which is best?

[mikling]

While you can choose which heads are purged during a manual process. Do note that the ALL the heads are all cleaned ( purged/primed ) during normal use and this cannot be turned off at all but is essential in how the printer functions. I would even venture to guess that manual cleaning is rarely required on these printers most of the time for many users and only invoked when there are problems and these are relatively few.

 

[Paul Golfer]

Lots of useful information gentlemen, many thanks.

I am narrowing my choice down to the Canon IP4500 or as Mikling suggests, the Canon MP970. Unfortunately the cheapest price I can find here in rip off Britain for the 970 is around 180 - about $310!!
The IP4500 is around 70 - $122.

So I guess the question is should I go for the 970 for the extra money - would I notice a quality difference do you think?

Thanks

Paul

 

[Manuchau]

As I just write in a separate thread....

On eBay Canada, a reputable photo store is offerng 6-brand new canon i-960s at a great price. This is a superb photo printer with a 6-ink system which uses the BCI-6 series of cartridges, and is a great value.

Auction #s are 120315697059 130262354709 and 350098270649...and I have nothing to do with this store at all...I just noticed this this morning!


This should be in Ripley's Believe-it-or not section...Better hurry!! I don't think thiese will last very long

 

[Kefp]

I have both MP970 and Ip4500 (and MP780) for a while now. They both produce very nice prints. If you are mostly printing 4X6, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference. With larger prints, the 970 may have a slight edge but you will need to squint a bit to see the difference. The 970 is superior to ip4500 for B/W printing, if you are into that. There seems to be a color cast with the latter but i have not played around with that too much. The MP970, however, drinks the photo cyan and photo mag carts!
The 970 is an all in one and can be networked. It is also quite bulky, relatively speaking. Another printer you should look at is IP3500. It does not have the black pigment cart. It's highly rated at a number of sites. It does not print CD/DVD. If you are in the US, you can sometime pick it up for next to nothing after rebate.

 

[headphonesman]

Lots of useful information gentlemen, many thanks.

I am narrowing my choice down to the Canon IP4500 or as Mikling suggests, the Canon MP970. Unfortunately the cheapest price I can find here in rip off Britain for the 970 is around 180 - about $310!!
The IP4500 is around 70 - $122.


Paul

Don`t forget this source ,I can recommend it , http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Canon-Outlet_Canon-Printers_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ7QQftidZ2QQtZkm

Study the final prices for a couple of days before deciding, the warranty promise works should you need it.

 

[mikling]

The 970 is well constructed and exudes quality. I have two of them (purchased as DOA units out of box) sitting around waiting for my attention to be repaired. They are new units and I can attest to them being well built.

It's pretty much standard that photoprinters tend to use far more light magenta and light cyan on average. The reason is simply that by using lighter shades of ink, they can place dots closer and produce lighter tones more accurately to give a smoother color image. This is more noticeable in images with smooth gradients. The 4500 uses darker ink and spaces the dots further to give the impression of a light shade. Whether or not this is discernible will be obviously be a function of the viewer and their ability to see it. So whether or not it is worth the difference is buyer dependent and the images normally printed.

B&W printing with color printers is extremely tricky and one should be careful not to expect results to that achieved by someone else unless they are using the identical ink and paper. The balance of colors to produce shades of gray is very sensitive. I imagine that the 970 is better than the 4500 here for obvious reasons with the lighter shades being available at its disposal to mix into light shades of gray. It's possible with custom profiling but very sensitive to slight shifts in media and ink.

Just a note for readers. The iP3500 actually DOES have the pigment black ink for text but LACKS the photoblack dye ink for photos. It uses Cyan Magenta and Yellow to create black. There are three drawbacks to this. The first is that all three colors are used for black and ink usage then increases quite a bit. The second is that the blacks using this mix is very sensitive and sometimes will not appear true black depending on ink and media. The last one is that some papers cannot handle the amount of ink that is used for dark shades when using this mixing scheme (rare though). All in all, the 3500 is a good general purpose printer meant primarily for text that can prints photos in a pinch. But as a dedicated photo printer, it is really unqualified in this respect.

 

[Kefp]

I have to say Mikling is right on the mark regarding the the 3 printers, 970, 4500 and 3500. I actually have the 3500 as well but have never used it. I took out the ink carts as spares for the other 2 printers. If I have to choose, I would choose 970 over 4500 as a photo printer. I now use 970 for photos and 4500 for DVDs. In fact I got another 970 as a spare last week when Fry's had it for $160AR. And I agree with Mikling that it is very well built.

 

[Grandad35]

Just a note for readers. The iP3500 actually DOES have the pigment black ink for text but LACKS the photoblack dye ink for photos. It uses Cyan Magenta and Yellow to create black. There are three drawbacks to this. The first is that all three colors are used for black and ink usage then increases quite a bit. The second is that the blacks using this mix is very sensitive and sometimes will not appear true black depending on ink and media. The last one is that some papers cannot handle the amount of ink that is used for dark shades when using this mixing scheme (rare though). All in all, the 3500 is a good general purpose printer meant primarily for text that can prints photos in a pinch. But as a dedicated photo printer, it is really unqualified in this respect.

I would add a 4th drawback to using C/M/Y to print Black It will not print anywhere near as dark as a printer using black ink.

Open this spreadsheet, click on the OEM Inks sheet and look at the Canon CLI-8 C/M/Y Inks graph. Because inks absorb light, a low value means that light at this wavelength will be absorbed by the ink and wont be reflected by the paper. Conversely, a high value means that the ink does not absorb this wavelength of light and it will be reflected by the paper. Note that there are some wavelengths where light is almost completely absorbed (e.g. 22-26 the actual wavelengths corresponding to these values are given in Column B of the spreadsheet), but there are many other wavelengths where the combination of all 3 inks is not as good.

Click on the Black sheet to see the absorption curves for black ink It is easy to see that the OEM CLI-8 black will appear to be the blackest of all of the inks that were tested.

Here is an image generated in the CMYK color space in Photoshop, with intersecting circles of C/M/Y. It was then converted back to RGB. The intersection of the 3 circles is a simulation of a combination of C, M and Y inks it is far from a deep black. This is why photo black is added to printers designed mainly to print photos. Your eyes will adjust to the lighter D max when viewed in isolation, but a side by side comparison of a CMYK and a CMY print will show a large difference in the dark tones.

 

[Paul Golfer]

Again, lots of interesting advice, thank you.

It was interesting to see the speadsheet Grandad35. I had some training on the colour management side of things a couple of years ago (I am a litho printer by trade and currently work for a large Japanese imaging company - unfortunately not Canon otherwise I could have got a staff discount!!) so was pleasantly surprised to see L,a,b, on the spreadsheet.
As I tend to have a critical eye for print I think I'll go for the MP970 as the best compromise of quality/budget.

Many thanks to all for their contributions, and thanks for the ebay link headphones man.

Paul