now I'm asking you all :
is canon a worthy contender in fine art printing space ?
Lets see...
Comparing Canon IPF 8400 to Epson 9900 we have:
1) Canon is faster (not by much).
2) Canon inks have
way better longevity than epsons.
3) Canon has a bigger color gamut on glossy while Espon has bigger gamut on matte papers (both relatively close).
4) Canon uses way less ink.
5) Canon never clogs.
6) Canon has user replaceable heads.
7) Canon has an internal hard drive and some quite smart functions (accounting, job storage and recall directly on the printer...)
8 ) Canon has an internal densitometer that helps linearizing the printer.
9) Epson has a finer dithering in theory (360/720 against 300/600) but under the microscope you see that actually very few dots are of the smaller size, most are as big as the dots from 300/600 printer. On the naked eye there is no perceivable difference.
Quite frankly I don't believe that Epson is a worthy contender. I had printers from all three (Canon, HP and Epson) and today I keep only HP and Canon. HP is probably bailing out of the fine art segment, but to this date no printer produces a better B&W print with OEM inks than the HP Z3xxx. Canon is the best option at this moment in my opinion. Epsons are capable of producing prints that look as good as the ones from Canons, but not so easy and at greater cost and with potential headaches, not to mention the lower permanence rating.
Regards.