Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5000
Monday, November 6th, 2006
New York City. One of the areas I went to Photo Plus Expo to research was pigment ink inkjet printers for making archival prints. My first round of research (documented here) led me to the Canon i9900 printer which I have and love. But, as I knew, dye inks are less archival than pigment inks (although more durable so are better for notecards and postcards).
If one is thinking about showing and selling prints one needs to consider this stuff, maybe not on a molecular scale but certainly on something a bit deeper than a brand scale. The old saying "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" applies to printers as well: no one ever got fired or in trouble for buying Epson and while I can’t argue with the results of prints done on higher end Epson printers, they are notorious for clogging and high costs of operation. It was just a matter of time before Canon and HP got into this market segment.
This printer, the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5000 is Canon’s answer to the Epson 4800, the tried and true workhorse of many professional photographers. Canon has come up with their own Lucia pigment inkset and independent reviews seem to say it will last as long or longer than Epson’s K3 inks. For me the bigger issue is maintenance; how easy is it for the heads to clog on these things if you don’t use them that often.
All of these higher end printers (as one of my other photos in this set shows) have ink cartridges not mounted on the head but on the body with plumbing between cartridge and head. When you put a cartridge in, half of it drains just to "charge" the plumbing with ink (shocking given the cost of these cartridges). The issue is, if the printer sits for a bit, does the ink dry out in the plumbing and if so, what is required to get going again short of an angioplasty or bypass surgery.
This printer has a self cleaning routine that it runs from time to time that moves a bit of ink through the system. Yes, it uses some precious ink but the alternative is much worse. The Epson 4800 also has a self-cleaning routine but it, notoriously, is not as good and the printer does clog.
I’m also looking at Canon’s smaller, consumer level pigment printer, the PIXMA Pro9500 but it won’t ship until next year. Same inkset, smaller, less "industrial scale" printer.
Controls on the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5000 printer.
Ink cartridges on the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5000 printer.
Big brother in this printer series, the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF9000. One needs an ego the size of Nebraska to print this big. And, who the heck has wall space for one of these things?
Or has a camera with the kind of resolution necessary to fill up this size of prints at reasonable resolution. You don’t want pixels the size of Omaha :-)
David, right, of course, but there are various up-scaling programs that people use when they don’t quite have enough resolution for this stuff and I’m told they work quite well.
All I can say is: “YOU’R SUCH A GEEK!!”
(coming from me, that’s a compliment)
Pam: Hey, takes on to know one! Okay, I admit it, I am. I love this stuff.
Perhaps one of you genius’s can help me.
I have a Canon i9900 on which i am tryiing to print B&W grey scale prints. They all come out
with a slight green tint.
I have set the MODE to grey scale so there is no color in the digital copy, and printing with the source being Photoshop Elements 3, via an Apple iMac G5.
I have used a lot of expensive paper and am unable to discover what I need to do to correct the problem
Thanks for any thoughts or directions.
Booth: paper has a lot to do with color shift as well as the driver and color management system you’re using on your computer. What software are you using to print from? What kind of paper?