Canon Pixma Pro-100 bargain?

[rasworth]

I have an Epson 3880, wouldn't mind having a dye based printer to try.  B&H is advertising a $250 rebate on the $380 Pro-100, effective to the end of June.  This seems to be a cheap way to experiment with dye printing, and I have the equipment to generate profiles for third party papers.  I'm assuming the manual path will allow reasonably thick (22+ mil) media.

Any strong opinions/advice on grabbing one of these?

Richard Southworth

[Mark D Segal]

Richard, it makes gorgeous prints and for a net price of 129 dollars it's hard to see how one can go wrong with this - it's a short distance from a giveaway. Whether the manual feed handles 22 mil thickness isn't specified in the online info for it, but you can install the manual from the Canon website and perhaps it will tell you.

[rasworth]

Mark,

thanks for the recommendation.  I downloaded (and installed, not a pdf) their manual - took some digging, seems to be aimed at tutorials more than information retrieval, but I did find the manual tray thickness limit, 23.6 mils.

I agree, seems like a no lose proposition.  It will replace an aging Artisan 725 I use for utility printing.

Richard Southworth

[rasworth]

Another question - not a big deal, but is longevity dependent upon using encapsulation type media?  I had a HP Designjet many years ago, used the HP encapsulation media, worked ok but not many choices.  Are all the Canon recommended papers of the encapsulation type?

Richard Southworth

[Mark D Segal]

Sorry, on that one I have no idea about longevity or longevity conditions. Perhaps check Aardenburg Imaging and see whether Mark McC-G has any data on it.

[MHMG]

Another question - not a big deal, but is longevity dependent upon using encapsulation type media?  I had a HP Designjet many years ago, used the HP encapsulation media, worked ok but not many choices.  Are all the Canon recommended papers of the encapsulation type?

Richard Southworth

Encapsulation media, more commonly called "swellable" papers have largely disappeared from the market. Even HP's "Premium Plus" branded swellable inkjet media were quietly replaced circa 2011 with microporous media.  Swellable papers did increase light fade and gas fade resistance significantly, but they also introduced other problems like sticking and blocking in high humiditiy environments which finally killed their market acceptance. And there were other issues as well.
 
Anyway, there are some test reports on the Pro-100 and OEM ink and media on the Aardenburg website, but I'll cut to the chase. The good news is that the Canon Chromalife 100+ dye based ink set (not to be confused with the earlier and much poorer Chromalife 100 ink set) along with the outstanding new three level black dyes used in the Pro-100 printer is the most stable dye set on the market today and delivers excellent ratings on select microporous media, edging out Epson's very good Claria dye performance due to the superior gray scale performance. Hp's Vivera dyes (not to be confused with Vivera pigments) land in third place for dye-based systems.  The Chromalife 100+ yellow ink is also arguably more lightfast than your Epson 3880 K3 yellow pigment, so all and all, the Pro-100 is in a class by itself with respect to dye-based printers, but only moderately lightfast compared to the highest rated OEM pigment sets (e.g., Epson's new HD ink and HP's Vivera pigmented inks). That said, no dye-based inkjet prints have the humidity and water resistance of pigmented inks.

The Pro-100's sweet spot is traditional RC photo printing.  It also prints beautifully with fine art glossy media like Hahnemuhle Rag Pearl 300gsm, not so much with matte papers because the Pro-100 lacks an MK black ink. It only has a PK black, so if falls a bit short on image quality when printing to matte media even though it probably meets less demanding amateur requirements for image quality on matte paper.  I find Canon's imposed 30mm margin restrictions when printing on fine art media settings to be regrettable, but nevertheless, it's hard to go wrong acquiring a Pro-100 at this nearly give-away price

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

[rasworth]

Mark,

Thanks, I think I'll grab one.  I did look at your results, noticed that the Canon media was better than Red River, if I'm interpreting the data correctly.  Is there something that Canon does to their media to improve permanence?

Richard Southworth

[MHMG]

Mark,

Thanks, I think I'll grab one.  I did look at your results, noticed that the Canon media was better than Red River, if I'm interpreting the data correctly.  Is there something that Canon does to their media to improve permanence?

Richard Southworth

Yes, the Canon branded RC media does indeed outperform the RR media I tested, and with all of Canon's 2 for 1, 4 for 1, etc. paper deals, it's no doubt hard for third party media vendors to compete even on price point. Canon, of course, wants its customer to use more OEM ink, so keeping media costs competitive makes a lot of sense there, too, as it encourage folks to print more

It's also quite possible (although I can't prove it with the limited number of tests I ran) that Canon has tuned the paper coating chemistry for better dye stability with its own inks.  Canon chemists obviously know the exact ink formulation and could easily request that their media supplier add some additional tailored chemistry (e.g., dye mordants, anti-oxidants, pH buffers, etc) to tune their dye performance on that media. It would in all probability add little to the cost of manufacturing the media yet yield superior system response.

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