CanonIPF 9100-Initial Impressions

[marcsitkin]

Just received a new Canon IPF 9100, and started doing some profiling and test printing. Very early in the process, but wanted to share some of my initial impressions.

Manual- pretty much useless in regards to being information rich. The good news is that the printed menu guide supplied and the front panel menu itself is fairly well thought out, so it's easy to get around. Nothing is really nested too deep to find with a bit of logic.

Canon tech set it up and started up without a hitch. We calibrated it using supplied Canon paper, and proceeded to do a few test prints via the photoshop driver and OS drivers. We picked a canned profile for a media close to ours.

Initial results were very good, especially when compared to the same test image printed on the Z3100. Canon's color gamut was quite good with very brilliant color rendition. we printed the Atkinson LAB test image. Most noticeable difference was in the Canon's reds, which simply blew away the Z3100's. Canon did it right when it came to this color. Gray ramps were very smooth, neutral throughout. Good shadow and highlight detail as well. Used the 16 bit mode via Photoshop plugin.

We proceeded to generate a custom profile via Monaco Profiler, using RGB targets. Scott Martin gave me some starting values, and the results were terrific. Very fast and very easy to deal with in the RGB realm.

Since we do a fair amount of tiled panels for popup booths, we are now trying to profile in CMYK+RGB space, and due to some confusion with the Wasatch RIP interface, have not had much luck. We are working out the problems with Wasatch, and should have success on Monday. Let's hope. MUCH more complex than creating the RGB profiles.

Since Q-Image and direct ouput from apps is possible for 90% of our work, the use of the RIP will be very much an occasional process.

The Canon driver interface seems pretty easy to get around, and I look forward to getting some fine art and photographic images printed through it soon.

So fair, I have a favorable impression. I'll update next week once we get some actual production behind us.

[marcsitkin]

Here are some second impressions after putting the Canon IPF 9100 into production for a week:

Things are progressing quite well with the machine. The RGB profiles we've generated with Monaco Profiler are working well in actual use, and we've finally gotten a useful CMYK+RGB profile working with the Wasatch Rip. It was a real battle to create the CMYK+RGB profile primarily due to the ink limiting functions in Wasatch and also in Monaco. Very hard to get good patches printed, but we finally did it. Had to lower the Ink limit to 150% when generating the profile (for Ilford Portable Display Film), which is lower than the RGB profile. The results were quite good, but took way longer than expected.

That said, all the output this week was done using the Canon Photoshop Plugin, the system drivers, or Q-Image. One limitation of the Photoshop plug in is that it doesn't print crop marks, which would be helpful for some of our work. QImage, of course is a workaround for this.

One of the drawbacks of using the plug in or drivers for output, especially with a mix of various media, is the necessity to constantly be aware of the various options in the multiple dialog boxes. It's easy to get distracted and miss a setting. That is a big plus for the RIP, as you can easily lock down all the settings for a given media type.

We ran several media types this week on commercial jobs, including Polypropolene film , Polyester Film, and Crane MuseoMax Fine Art paper. Results were really good on all media, with no problems with head strikes or other material handling issues. The media loading was far easier than our HP's, and roll take up was perfect. We of course were surprised that no 3" adapters for the feed roller were provided, but a bit of cutting on some old 3" adapters from an HP worked just fine.

All in all, this has been one of the easiest printers (I've owned about 15) to set up and operate. Let's hope the honeymoon continues.

[marcsitkin]

Had a chance to test tech support this week. Mostly trying to get answers to some minor questions. What a difference from the support we get from HP! After dialing in to the 800 number, one menu choice rings through directly to a technician. We talked to a couple over the course 3 or 4 calls, and both people spoke English and were very well versed in the printer and it's operation. A very pleasant change!

Only one minor issue with a film/ink and laminate combination that did not yield very good adhesion. It seems like an image with heavy red coverage doesn't allow a heat assist laminate to cling well. We'll switch to a cold for now as a work around.

After a couple hundred square feet of output, only the MK ink has dropped to 80%. All others are still at 100%. This printer really seems to be sipping the ink slowly.

We profiled another material in CMYK_RGB, and had a much easier time with it than the first try. We were a bit more aggressive in Channel ink limiting, and the material was able to handle a higher ink load, so it went along pretty quickly.

Print quality is pretty impressive, and the printer itself is easy to handle.

[Doyle Yoder]

They are real workhorses. My iPF9000 is still going strong after 2 years and over 49,000 pages.