Looking at the Canon PRO-2000

[keithcooper]

After a few delays (curse you paying work! ;-)  )  I've finished a review of the Canon PRO-2000 printer I've had here for a few weeks.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/review_canon_pro-2000.html

The review covers use of the printer, whilst installation and setup are in a separate article

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/printer/canon_pro-2000_setup.html

Its rather long, but I wanted to give a fairly broad overview of what is a quite significant advance in Canon's printer range.

The printer hasn't been picked up yet, so if I've missed anything, please do ask. With the length of the article and just myself doing them, it's easy to miss something...

[samueljohnchia]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the thorough review. Just one question, what does the "Custom" setting for Print Quality offer? What are you allowed to customise?



Great to know that the printer doesn't appear to mark fragile papers as much in your experience. It's a pity that the matte black isn't as black as the Epson UC HDX. I assume that the gamut is identical to the Pro-1000 for identical media settings on the same paper, as they share the same inkset. All in all a very impressive printer from Canon. It was great to see Marcin's video of the beast printing. Scott Martin's review was also very helpful too, especially in addressing the hugely improved screening pattern on these new Pro printers. Well done Canon!

I just hope that the print permanence hasn't taken a hit from the ink improvements.

[Abdo]

Thank you for your review.

In addition to many features, the question that remains is:

It's really perceptival print quality when compared to 6400/8400 and 9400 line?

 

[keithcooper]

Thanks.

The custom setting (I'd missed a screenshot - now added) just gives a slider for quality settings, which don't match with the usual names and only allows you to pick certain positions depending on media type

If you're printing directly via the driver (such as with Preview on the Mac) it also shows the rendering intent, but greyed out when I tried it.
You can get the Rendering intent to appear (but only Percep/Sat/None) by changing from ColorSync to Canon Color, but then I can't find where you specify the profile to be used (unless it's the one you can define when making a custom media type, which otherwise does nothing)

So my answer would be not much that I could figure out...   (any clues gratefully received)

Which is why almost all my test prints of any size came directly from Photoshop (CS6) or a few multiples via ImageNest and Mirage.

[keithcooper]

Thank you for your review.

In addition to many features, the question that remains is:

It's really perceptival print quality when compared to 6400/8400 and 9400 line?

 

I've an 8300 and the B&W mode is definitely more neutral under artificial lighting (unadjusted)
Colour prints - just as with the PRO-1000 I could see differences of some papers because of the CO coat.

I'd also suggest that the new printers have a cleaner output on some strong colour gradients, but that I had to put 'real world' photos next to each other and look carefully to see.

Does it make me think that my 8300 is no longer an excellent printer - no.

I don't print enough to be able to justify the expense of a replacement, until/if the 8300 has a major problem.

I'd question the wisdom of anyone junking a perfectly good working x300/x400 printer for an update, unless things like the dual roll and print speed or some other design factor was key to their business.

[kevinmcdnyc]

Great job, Keith.  Are there any new ink permanence numbers from Canon?  I spoke to someone at Canon USA who said Wilhelm would have numbers around this time.

[keithcooper]

Great job, Keith.  Are there any new ink permanence numbers from Canon?  I spoke to someone at Canon USA who said Wilhelm would have numbers around this time.

Thanks - no numbers that I know of here (I'm in the UK)