Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: The View on August 17, 2014, 04:12:34 pm

Title: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: The View on August 17, 2014, 04:12:34 pm
I started to hate my Canon 9500 Mark II printer this morning.

I want to print on fine art matte paper, and the printer simply doesn't do it. It wants me to do a big margin, throwing away a lot of paper.

So I complied, added margin, tried to print again.

Again, the printer declined to print.

Because I wasn't using a Canon paper - declined to print on Moab paper in the fine art setting.

And making it impossible to print my portfolio on scored Moab Lasal matte paper.

What's gotten into the minds of the Canon people that they want to tell me how to print? Not even their top model prints well on art papers. And you can't print borderless at all except for a couple of standard sizes.

This was my second Canon printer, and it will be my last.

I've been fighting with the idiotic programming of this thing for weeks now, and simply can't get it to do what I want: print highest quality on fine art matte paper with no margin - or at least a small margin, that I can gut away.

The huge margin this thing demands take too much of a bite out of the paper, and doesn't leave enough image.


This seems to be the Canon strategy to force photographers to buy their papers.

One up:  also demands to print fine art matte through the front tray - which is very poorly designed, and which never worked on my printer ( I was on the phone with Canon support for over an hour and they couldn't get it working, either. It's so fickle, and loses contact all the time).



I can't print on my Moab Lasal fine art paper, because this silly printer tells me it's not an acceptable size.


(I called Canon and asked, if I bought their top model, could I then print fine art paper sizes I wanted, and could I then print borderless? Answer: no, even with their top model you can only print what Canon wants you to print, not what you want to print, trying to force you to buy their paper).

Until Canon gets the message and lets customers print on whatever paper of whatever size they want (and stops protecting their own papers from competition), one cannot buy a Canon printer.

Epson and Hewlett-Packard impose no such restrictions on its clients.
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: rgs on August 17, 2014, 05:39:10 pm
my PRO100 prints fine on most 3rd party papers but you are right about the margin settings on some of the fine art papers. However I don't believe it's about forcing the use of Canon Papers. I prefer the look of Canon prints and my (limited) exposure to Epson printers and the terrible clogs makes me think Canon is a better choice. Hasn't the 9500 MK II been replace by the Pro 10 or the Pro 1. The Pro 1 is, by all reports, an exceptional fine art printer. 
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: The View on August 17, 2014, 11:01:00 pm
Yes, the Pro 1 has been Canon's top printer, but it shares the problems of the software interface with the other Canon printers.

I agree, that clogging of Epsons is a big problem if you are not printing daily.

But the problem with Canon is that the software forces you to do things that don't make sense.

You can't print on fine art paper through the rear feeder - and the front feeder is a fiddly mechanism, that often doesn't work (and in my printer doesn't work at all).


There is a great link in the other thread about matte papers on how to work around some of Canons pointless restrictions.

Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: rgs on August 18, 2014, 01:10:48 am
I agree the wide borders are a bit frustrating and I don't understand why that is done, but it's not that big a deal to me. I prefer borders (makes handling the print safely easier) and, if I want borderless, I would rather trim borderless than print borderless - less mess in the printer and more consistent printing.

I have not used your printer but I can tell you that my Pro 100 - and, I suspect, the Pro 10 and the Pro 1 - feeds very nicely in the main feed slot. The rear slot is only for thicker materials (over about 310 GSM depending on the paper) and is a hand feed slot.

 
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: heheapa on August 18, 2014, 08:41:29 am
You can print it as Canon Matte paper, but you need to create your own paper profile with canon matte media and assign accordingly when you print.
This worked for me in Canon PRO 1 before I sold it  :D
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: heheapa on August 18, 2014, 08:52:36 am
I agree the wide borders are a bit frustrating and I don't understand why that is done, but it's not that big a deal to me. I prefer borders (makes handling the print safely easier) and, if I want borderless, I would rather trim borderless than print borderless - less mess in the printer and more consistent printing.

I have not used your printer but I can tell you that my Pro 100 - and, I suspect, the Pro 10 and the Pro 1 - feeds very nicely in the main feed slot. The rear slot is only for thicker materials (over about 310 GSM depending on the paper) and is a hand feed slot.

 

I had problem in printing 4R & 5R ILFORD GALERIE Prestige Smooth Pearl with the main feed slot. It worked before I upgraded to a newer firmware. And the rear slot doesn't take papers like 4R or 5R, and it gave me intermittent loading issue with thick paper media, eg. canvas. I think Epson is better in the media handling but the matte and glossy black ink swap cost significant higher especially with smaller ink tank model like R3000. So I think Canon and Epson are both blood sucker for our hard earn money :)
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: The View on August 20, 2014, 12:54:54 am
There are issues with the front feed slot of the 9500 pixma pro.

It's very fickle, and in my case it doesn't work at all.

On top of it, the printer refuses to take ANY FINE ART PAPER through the rear slot, so I can't print on fine art paper at all on my 9500 mark II.

I found out about the defect after the warranty expired - as it usually happens in those cases. And while I'm a member of Canon's professional program, the 9500 is excluded from it - so no luck there as well. I'm pretty much sitting on a printer who doesn't allow me to print on fine art paper AT ALL.

So, wouldn't the software interface be so bad, I could at least work around the issue. But you can't.

How's Hewlett-Packard, by the way?
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: John Nollendorfs on August 20, 2014, 11:45:39 am
HP does not have a fine art printer in that class! In fact they seem to have abandoned the fine art printing market. They still have the Z3200 available though, I have heard.
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: rgs on August 20, 2014, 01:20:01 pm
HP makes great office printers but...
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: PeterAit on August 20, 2014, 04:23:14 pm
HP makes great office printers but...

I remember the first HP LaserJet. Slow, one-sided monochrome prints, weighed a ton, $2000, and we considered it the cat's meow!
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: Misirlou on August 20, 2014, 06:43:44 pm
How's Hewlett-Packard, by the way?

I bought my 9500 Mk II to replace an older HP photo printer, the highest end sheet-fed one. My HP was pretty good, as long as the paper profiles were handled correctly. The Canon is better in most every way, although we still use the HP for office documents.
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: abiggs on August 20, 2014, 10:10:37 pm
Large margins on Canon desktop printers has nothing to do with third party papers at all.  These large margins are across the board for all fine art media, even the ones that Canon sells. Just clarifying.
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: Some Guy on August 20, 2014, 10:25:00 pm
You can print it as Canon Matte paper, but you need to create your own paper profile with canon matte media and assign accordingly when you print.
This worked for me in Canon PRO 1 before I sold it  :D

Done that too with a old Canon 9000 II.  Just ignore Art Papers settings and their border cramping nonsense, write your own profiles with a ColorMunki Photo in Luster or whatever using whatever Art paper you are planning for, and go!

SG
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: The View on August 25, 2014, 03:33:06 am
Done that too with a old Canon 9000 II.  Just ignore Art Papers settings and their border cramping nonsense, write your own profiles with a ColorMunki Photo in Luster or whatever using whatever Art paper you are planning for, and go!

SG


But you still can't print borderless on most sizes. That's what really annoys me, as the printer could do it, would the interface be better.

So thumbs up for the engineers who built the printer, thumbs down (beheading) for the software guys.
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: heheapa on August 25, 2014, 07:19:29 am
But you still can't print borderless on most sizes. That's what really annoys me, as the printer could do it, would the interface be better.

So thumbs up for the engineers who built the printer, thumbs down (beheading) for the software guys.

From my understand, it's the hardware design that not guarantee borderless print for thicker fine art media and hence there is a lock in the driver/firmware.
It's in the spec and your user manual. So you just can't blame Canon for out-of-spec printing. There is always room for improve and hence newer model comes out. So be patient and wait for next Canon Pixma Pro printer that resolved the borderless print issue  ;D

Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: jerryrock on August 25, 2014, 05:08:20 pm
You should not fault all Canon printers for the problems experienced in one particular model. My Canon iPF5100 continues to produce beautiful prints on any paper source I want to use. Of course you must profile the non-Canon papers but Canon's Photoshop print plug in allows you to create your own paper sizes up to the maximum allowable width for the printer.

Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: hugowolf on August 25, 2014, 06:57:37 pm
But you still can't print borderless on most sizes. That's what really annoys me, as the printer could do it, would the interface be better.

So thumbs up for the engineers who built the printer, thumbs down (beheading) for the software guys.

That is true of most printers, including Epsons. The Epson Pro 3880 and 3880, for example, can print 8" x 10" borderless, but not 8" x 12". The soak pads are there for eight inch wide paper, so why not any length?

In general, however, borderless printing, especially in large quantities, should be avoided - it makes a mess of the inside of the machine. These printers weren't designed to enable the user to clean out the mess from the overspray.

Brian A
Title: Re: What one should not buy a Canon photo printer
Post by: Jim Kasson on August 25, 2014, 10:12:05 pm
I remember the first HP LaserJet. Slow, one-sided monochrome prints, weighed a ton, $2000, and we considered it the cat's meow!

uh, $3495?

The rest of the story... (http://www.hparchive.com/seminar_notes/HP_LaserJet_The%20Early%20History_by_Jim_Hall_110512.pdf)

Jim