Canon Pro-1000 ink warning levels?

[rick_k]

 My PFI-1000<CO> Chroma Optimizer apparently ran out with very little notification. The warning indicator came on for the first time this morning. On the first print I printed after the indicator appeared it printed about 64 sq/in (4.75 x 13.5 of a 20.25 x 13.5 print area) and then it just ejected the paper after having printed about 1/5th of the print. On the ink check it shows about 10% remaining with the warning sign showing. It still shows about 10% of the indicator bar with ink but it ejected the print part way through. I'm assuming the ejection was due to the empty or near empty CO.

What has been your experience with the level warnings and when the printer would stop printing?


Thanks,
Rick

[Mark D Segal]

Something peculiar going on. I suggest you discuss with Tech Support. The intended behaviour is as follows: The unit has a buffer where it stores ink to complete a print job that is being processed. The printer should not eject the print job because one of the inks is out or low; it will either not start the job at all or it will complete it and then flash the warning light. The warning will come up before the unit starts printing so no ink is wasted.

[howardm]

what's the serial number of the printer.  Perhaps you fall into the leaky cartridge zone so there was actually a lot less CO than the printer thought.

[rick_k]

Thanks for the replies.

I haven't noticed any leakage and I have been checking for it. Maybe if it is the CO leaking I just couldn't see it as it is clear. It is in the AEGL# serial number group.

I do have a replacement printer on order through the local photography store where I bought the printer. They actually contacted me and offered to order the replacement and handle all that for me. Nice customer service on their part. Their printer guy said they have not seen the type of behavior I experienced with the paper ejection. When they got too low on an ink it wouldn't start the print job like Mark said.

Thanks again,
Rick

[sjphotos]

It could be leaking, but perhaps hasn't built up enough to actually leak through the bottom of the printer.
Also, if you have the affected serial number, I would call Canon and get the printer replaced. I have one
with the serial number and it doesn't leak either, at least not outwardly. I called Canon and they were more then happy
to send me a new printer. Why chance it and always wonder if it will start leaking, especially since Canon will replace it.

[sjphotos]

Follow up.  I received my replacement from Canon. Curious what you decided to do. I think you have a leak and should definitely replace it. Anyway, knowing I was getting a new printer and ink, I of course printed away as the ink was free. Well only 3 inks gave a low ink warning, this after at least 30 17x22's and a few dozen 8x10's, testing different papers. That said, I went on to print 15-20 more 17x22's and the 3 low ink warnings were still the only 3 that were low and they still were not out. The display ink levels still showed that there was ink. Although low, but I didn't manage to run out, I tried to, but the new printer came and I did the swap. So, when you get a warning, you still have a good amount of ink, it's more of an alert to get more and have it ready to replace, then it is that your about to run out. When you think about it, most people can't just go down to their local camera store and buy this ink, you will order it and most likely not have it for 3-5 days. So this is good to know and the way it should be. Your experience sounds like you have a leak.

[GrahamBy]

Wasn't the leakage supposed to be from the maintenance cart?

Sjphotos, were you using CO? I noticed in the specs that it is expected to do only a fraction of the number of prints of any of the other inks, if used all the time.

[sjphotos]

Yes, and I was expecting it to go quicker, but it was not one of the cartridges to give a low ink warning. It may actually in fact last, as the output must be far less to cover the same space then ink coverage.

[rick_k]

I have ordered my replacement printer but I have not received it yet.

Followup on original post. I powered off everything and powered back on and was able to print a couple of small test prints successfully. I have not been able to determine any other cause of the failed print but have been able to continue printing so I no longer think it was the CO running out as the cause. I still haven't seen any leakage under the printer.

My ink level indicators show CO as lowest at 1/10th, then PBK, GY, Y about 2/10th and all the rest about 3/10th. Maintenance Cartridge about 6/10th full.

[GrahamBy]

You were using CO set to auto, or overall?

[rick_k]

I've done most of mine with the Clear Coat the Entire Page setting in Print Studio Pro.

To be honest, I've been disappointed with the CO. I was hoping it would do more. On my black and whites where there is whiter areas the gloss differential is still pretty strong IMHO. I've been thinking I'm doing something wrong but at the same time the CO is getting used up faster than anything else.

Rick

[sjphotos]

I have it set to auto and print a lot of B&W and cannot detect any gloss differential whatsoever.  Printing on Canson Platine and Museo Silver Rag.

[rick_k]

I tried printing on Canson Baryta Photographique and Moab Juniper Baryta. I think the Moab is a bit better but really just decided that for that photograph, matte is the way I have to go.

sjphotos - did Canon provide any instructions on what to do to the printer you shipped back? were you supposed to run the Prepare to Transportation? etc?

Thanks,
Rick

[sjphotos]

No directions, just return UPS label. I did however secure everything from movement and it fit nicely between the styrofoam that the new one came in.
The way it is packed it cannot move at all. When you open the box with the new one, the styrofoam lifts straight out, there is in a heavy plastic which can open from the top, put the old one back in with the plastic around it and when you place the styrofoam back in place it is a nice snug fit, cannot move at all. Close the box, seal it and put the label on it and call UPS and they will pick it up. I did remove the new warranty card to register the new unit as it has a new serial number from the replacement.

[GrahamBy]

I admit I'm confused about what the CO is supposed to do. First of all, it's called chroma optimiser, but the discussion seems to suggest it is to modify gloss.

Second, looking at this


from Keith's Northlight images review of the Pro-1, one would think it's role is to make the printed areas more glossy; yet the example of use is to make unprinted, glossy-paper-white parts of the image less glossy, to match the printed parts:


Or is it in fact making lustre paper more glossy? In any case, the Canon schematic suggests it should be applied to the unprinted parts when set to auto, but Keith's photo suggests the opposite... although it wasn't really clear either. Maybe he's reading?

Anyway, the difference between allover and auto presumably explains the difference in rate of consumption of the CO.

[sjphotos]

I don't fully understand it yet, but I can say this, with having it set to auto, all I know is, my prints are coming out beautiful with an even overall gloss.
Kieth will be reviewing the Pro-1000 fairly soon. I think he said he would have one to test in March. I'm sure he will be able to shed more light on this. I think the CO optimizes the light reflection to reduce any appearance of bronzing.

[MHMG]

If the Canon Pro-1000 is putting the Chroma Optimizer over the entire print including margins when you have the "auto" setting invoked, then this is exactly the opposite behavior of the smaller Canon Pro-1 printer. 

In the  Pro-1 Driver settings under the "Clearcoat" menu the choice of "auto" restricts the CO to just the image area of the print and doesn't extend into the white margins of the paper.  But Canon should have called this auto mode "economy" mode because on the Pro-1 the auto mode actually prints variable amounts of CO in the image depending on how much other ink is laid down such that literally zero CO is printed into any pure white areas.  Thus, the auto mode reduces bronzing but does little to eliminate differential gloss which is easily seen in image areas like clouds that are tonally going from light grays to pure whites (probably one reason why Canon calls it a chroma optimizer and not a gloss optimizer even though it does that too).

To get the CO to print into the white image areas and into the print margins as well you have to choose "overall" mode on the Pro-1, and if you don't want a small (and visually annoying) break in CO at the paper edges, then you also need to choose borderless printing along with the "overall" clearcoat setting. Or, if you want CO overall in the image but not extending into the margins (to keep CO consumption down) you then have to use the "custom" mode which is a two step process where you must build an image mask first in order to keep the CO confined to the image area only but still printing over this image area into the pure whites like it does when using the current "overall" mode.

What Canon should have done was given us a couple more options to make life easier for everyone. The clearcoat menu should also have a "none" mode if you don't want to use the CO at all on a glossy/luster print (e.g. if you want to post coat the print with another type of spray like Premier Print Shield). I could have sworn that option was there in the Pro-1 driver originally, but on the latest Mac driver, the only way to get "none" on the Pro-1 now is to make a custom mask using the "custom" mode which masks the entire print area. That's a PITA, but it works.  Next, there should be an "economy" mode setting that acts like the current auto mode, and then a superior auto mode which should function exactly like "overall" mode does now except be confined just to the image area. Again, you can create this superior CO effect by choosing the custom mode feature, but again, it's a PITA to have to resort to the two step custom masking feature because it requires an image editing layer to also be made by the enduser.  Lastly, the "overall" mode should remain the final choice and function like it does now,i.e., extending CO fully over the whole print surface when you also choose borderless printing.

I'd be really surprised if the Pro-1000 driver invokes the CO clearcoat menu choices differently than the Pro-1, but I don't have a Pro-1000, so I can't confirm. If auto mode now coats the image area fully, then perhaps Canon listened to some complaints about the Pro-1 auto mode not cleacoating the white areas in the image and improved the auto mode on the Pro-1000 as I suggested above for the Pro-1.

best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[rick_k]

Here are a couple of shots that illustrate what I'm seeing. Granted the highlights are in the whitest areas but there is some ink laid down there I believe (in the third the face has color/texture). In the worst angles it seems like half her face almost disappears.

1. This is the Canson Baryta at a severe angle to the light

2. This is the Canson Baryta at slightly under straight on but with a light directly behind and slightly above the camera. The worst areas are the back of the babies hand into the chest and around her right eye.

3. This is the Canon Premium Matte so you can see what you should be able to see.


Rick

[GrahamBy]

Mark, thanks, I think I get it now. Incredible that the driver is not able to distinguish margins from in-image paper-white! I stick to my point of view that there is loose cog somewhere in the Canon printer firmware development group, who makes these bizarre decisions on paper size limits, number of paper format limits and now this. Hopefully for the pro-1000 they'll fix it... but maybe they just have an incredibly ugly corporate culture.

Looking at the pro-1000 manual (which pretty much examplifies the worst in manual writing practice), I found:
"Auto: the printer automatically selects the areas to be clear-coated, and whether clear-coating is to be executed"

Of course no info on the algorithm it uses to decide "whether clear coating is to be executed"

the only other information I found in the 800+ pages is that if you use a paper that doesn't allow borderless printing (it doesn't say that, but it appears to be the defining factor), you can't use "overall".

Staying with my pro-100 looks like a good option for the moment 

[MHMG]

the only other information I found in the 800+ pages is that if you use a paper that doesn't allow borderless printing (it doesn't say that, but it appears to be the defining factor), you can't use "overall".

This may be a bit of a semantics problem in the Canon manual. If the Pro-1000 is anything like the Pro-1, you won't be able to do borderless printing on matte fine art media, so essentially you get the borderless printing option only with the glossy/luster photo settings which in turn are the only media that benefit from CO.  I suspect the Pro-1000 will be like the Pro-1, ie. you don't have to use the borderless choice to select the CO overall setting on a glossy/luster type photo paper, but without the borderless option also invoked the CO will stop about 2mm shy of the paper's edge.  For folks framing the print under a matt, the borderless setting therefore won't be necessary since that non CO line of demarcation at the print edges will be covered under the matt, but on general principles I personally want to let the CO print seamlessly over the whole print, margins and all, right out to the edges, so I always use the borderless option.

Also, I have routinely experienced that the ink receptor coating on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk and other IGFS look-a-likes such as Canson Baryta have a microporous structure that just loves to drink in spray coats like Premier Print Shield. I can never get them totally sealed and gloss differential-free without resorting to at least two heavy coats of spray or three moderate coats.  Printer applied gloss optimizers will be no different on these media. The printer manufacturer tends to optimize the gloss level for it's own branded RC papers and thus the printer won't be laying down a heavy enough gloss optimizer coat to completely seal the surface of various fine art media like the Canson Baryta. You could try a second GO pass by sending the printer an image of a white page only and passing the print through the printer again, but that's going to gobble up a lot of your GO ink, and may still not be totally satisfactory. This is another reason why Canon printers with CO inks should give us a "none" option. For problematic media like Canson Baryta, I would personally not use Epson printer GO or Canon printer CO features and simply coat those special media with a post coating like Print Shield where you've got more control over coating thickness after printing.

best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com