Canon i950 printer
Canon i950 printer
- Subject: Canon i950 printer
- From: Armand Rosenberg <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:24:52 -0400
Herewith an unsolicited review. I realize full well this does not
concern the usual >$10K monster most of you guys (and gals?) debate,
but if I may interrupt for one second:
I just got my new Canon i950 just to to see what Canon is up to.
Ultimately, I'm thinking something larger like the 9100, but it's not
readily available yet and curiosity got the best of me...
First of all, pleasantly easy to install under OS 9.2. No crashes
(yet). Second, I literally had to look at it to make sure it was
printing: it really is whisper-quiet, much quieter than any other
desktop printer I've ever seen (mostly Epsons). And I wasn't even
using its "quiet mode"! Just a gentle sound when it ejects the
finished print. And it truly is about as fast as advertised, ie VERY
fast (running off an ancient 8600/300 with add-on USB card, no less).
Head alignment was a very minor tweak btw.
I tested it with PS7 using the standard driver, with the RGB test
image from tssphoto.com. This test file is in AdobeRGB. I have
previously purchased Ultrachrome prints of this image on various
Epson papers for comparison purposes.
I tried several settings of the driver, all in Manual mode, both
"standard" and "colorsync" (using "Canon recommended" profile for the
latter). I printed this image in both color and monochrome -- for the
latter, I either clicked "monochrome" in the driver, or converted the
image to grayscale prior to printing. All tests were on Canon's Photo
Pro paper, a nice glossy surface and a nice thickness (which by the
way is quite acid-free, both front and back, according to my ph
testing pen, unlike most Epson papers, including the one formerly
known as "archival" matte whose backing I find is quite acidic).
I judged my prints by eye under both tungsten and Solux lighing
(separately). It's the best I can do -- I have no expensive
instruments.
The color prints with the canned profiles were pretty accurate
color-wise, but there's no control over the profile-to-profile
conversion (if any actually occurs in the driver) and there's no
access to individual profiles so doing this step in PS7 is not an
option. Too bad. Probably a custom profile with conversion in PS7
prior to printing will fix that issue -- don't know yet. The prints
on this paper show no bronzing or other surface effects I've seen
before. No great metamerism issue with color prints, at least not to
bother me (but see below).
But what I really wanted to see is how it handles b&w printing. I've
been waiting for Cone's long-delayed new system (current version
doesn't support glossy papers). And ImagePrint with an Epson 2200 is
a $1200 (total) option that would be fine except (once gain, with
feeling) it has issues with glossy papers. So: I printed the
monochrome (converted) test image with various driver settings, and
also printed the color version with the "monochrome" checkbox on. The
results were all pretty similar and surprisingly NEUTRAL throughout
the tonal range (again, judging by my eye -- I've seen plenty of
tests along the years FWIW). There is a SLIGHT bluish cast in the
middle-to-quarter tones, but it's very slight, and more evident under
Solux lights than tungsten -- in fact under tungsten lighting the b&w
prints seem quite neutral throughout. Every other time I've tried
this test on any other desktop printer, either with standard driver
settings or with custom profiles, the results were far worse. I can
honestly say that I am truly impressed with i950's b&w printing.
Almost a "wow" (I'm hard to please).
One quibble (aside from the colorsync issue) is that there's no
numerical setting for resolution in the driver, unlike Epson which
allows you to choose 1440X720, 720X720 etc. But since I always print
at the highest quality (resolution) anyway and since this printer is
so darn fast, this also is not a big issue IMHO. Another quibble is
that unlike Epson there appears to be no way to tell this printer to
use black ink only -- I was curious how bad the graininess would be
in a b&w print done this way (previous results with other printers
were not good enough, so I suspect not having this option is no real
loss).
One test I plan to run soon is a fading test, with some fluorescent
tubes I set up for this purpose. If the result is not too bad (and I
don't expect it to match Ultrachrome here), I'd say this printer is a
winner in my book.
Hope this helps someone out there. Any feedback is always
appreciated. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Armand
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