Canon 44" Pro 4600 versus Epson 44" Epson P9570

[MHMG]

MBK was alredy reformulated in GP-4000/2000 (and PRO-300) as well

OK, perhaps it's me, but I think maybe Canon marketing is also mixing metaphors here, metaphorically speaking . Comparing with older Imageprograf Pro series printers like the pro-4000 and 4100 models that were using the original 12 ink LUCIA PRO ink brand, the new Pro-4600 has moved onto LUCIA PRO II which means that all LUCIA PRO II inks including MBK, are new to this ImagePrograf Pro series, save for the little PRO-300 printer which claimed a lesser 9 ink "LUCIA PRO" formulation yet had the newer MBK ink included as well. So, it's just a bit confusing, IMHO, but if you own a PRO-4000 or 4100 and want to upgrade to the PRO-4600, it seems fair to say all 12 inks will be new and improved! The GP series seems to be another beast all together what with its fluorescent pink ink

Anyway, thus a good likelihood that the new 4600 will indeed outperform on dMax with most glossy and matte papers. Easy enough for folks to measure and confirm with a spectrophotometer.

[Ryan Mack]

I would really love to see a magnified capture of the dithering pattern for B&W prints to compare the 4000 and 4600. My Piezography printer has been idle long enough I'm guessing it will be a pain and a small fortune to get printing again so I'd rather just give up on that and upgrade to a 4600 when my 4000 runs out of ink if the B&W looks more neutral and has improved longevity.

[NAwlins_Contrarian]

This is from the Epson Io Group.... This is from a friend Walker Blackwell , a highly regarded fine art printmaker for the last 23 years or so. He’s tech specialist and ink developer etc. He has the new Canon 60” and sent us his test results. I just copied and pasted part of it
In the end it gets into lots of dmax measurements of tons of papers. By the way he likes the 6600 but there are issues, as you can read below....

On another note, I am severely disappointed with the matte black dmax. First print was L* 14.4 on a cheap paper. After running a lot of black it went all the way to L* 18. This is a critically f*cked thing and could potentially doom the entire canon market for this type of printer permanently if not addressed. Honestly, if they don’t address it with me and other adopters promptly, they could well deserve to exit the market with a little fart wiff and nobody would miss them....

Thanks for the helpful response, and sorry to be so late to reply.

He may be an expert, and maybe I'm about to betray my ignorance, but what I can glean from that report doesn't convince me of anything, especially when Keith Cooper's tests (e.g. as I linked above) appear to find very similar Dmax values in current / recent Canon and Epson pigment-ink printers on matte paper. Some specific points:

(1) Why is he testing with / reporting measurements from "a cheap paper"? Maybe you do that to get the basic functions tested / working, but not to see what sort of performance the printer can deliver. With this sort of printer, and for those caring about quality, the relevant question is what is the printable Dmax, gamut, etc. on e.g. Canson Rag Photographique or Arches 88.

(2) The fact that "First print was L* 14.4 on a cheap paper. After running a lot of black it went all the way to L* 18" shows he was heading in the wrong direction. Either something else unexplained is a work, or else it sounds like user error.

(3) The report doesn't say what sort of L* min he gets with an Epson P9570 or similar on the same papers. For those making a purchasing decision, one relevant datum is printable L* min on the papers intended to be used. If in corresponding measurements of L* min e.g. Canon is 14.4 / 18 and Epson is 13.6 / 17, then that's a pretty trivial difference. If e.g. is Canon is 16 where Epson is 12, then that's a substantial difference.

(4) For somebody who is an "ink developer", I'd want a clear statement that all printers being compared are with the regular OEM inks, OEM drivers, and either OEM or paper-manufacturer ICC profiles. Anything else is an unfair, and usually inapplicable, comparison. Some of the report seems to be about Epson ABW mode versus a similar mode on Canon. Whatever merits of those modes, they're not a good way to evaluate e.g. Dmax. Print an appropriate chart with appropriate software, Adobe Color Printer Utility, whatever; measure it with a known-good spectrophotometer; and report those results. Or build an ICC profile in the same standardized way and use those to make a comparison.

(5) Am I cynical to wonder whether something reported on the Epson Io Group is susceptible to a certain degree or bias, or at least reduced familiarity with how to get the most out of a Canon versus how to get the most out of an Epson?

Regardless, thanks for the info, and this is certainly an issue to at least watch.

[JCD]

All I know is he bought the new Canon 60” machine and generally likes it apart from the MK and the gloss enhancer on some fiber gloss media. He said he was impressed with the dither improvement.

He is a techno geek and kind of obsessive about dmax, and a 23 year bw printing specialist.

The one thing that I do know is that all the Lucia Pro Inks are new except for the MK. They state that.
I know that the MK dmax in my old IpF 8300 was way below my HPz3200, but so was my Epson 9890 at that time until I put Cones amazing MK in it which was a night and day difference. I never used the 4100.

My P 9570 MK looks close to the Piezo MK but I haven’t measured it yet. We’re getting ready to make profiles.

John

[Ryan Mack]

I use ImagePrint and they provide profiles for Canon 2000 and 2600 for Hahnemuhle Photo Rag with MBK ink. Their profiles show the 2600 having a much darker black point. Not sure what to make of that given the review above.

[JCD]

In the actual online webinar when the new Canons were released I specifically asked the tech expert if the bw matte printing would be better than the previous LF Canons because the 8300 I had produced very bluish grays and a weak dmax on the best Canson and Hah. Matte media.

He told me that the grays and the MK inks have not been changed but that the PK black and all colors had. On their promotional literature they say all the inks are new except the MK. Don’t know what to make of that. iF they still have those bluish gray inks that means their ABW type driver is using a lot of yellow ink to neutralize. If they have changed the grays that’s great.  No change  would result in less bw longevity and metameric failure on various light sources as with the earlier Canons. May be an issue for some and may not. They certainly aren’t clear about it and never even mentioned bw until I brought it up. It’s easy enough to test dmax. Just print out an 8x10 sheet of pure black on the best Matt paper you use and measure the density.

As for all around longevity we have no evidence at all to support their claim about real improvements because Wilhelm has not posted anything. If Mark McCormick is accurate in that they are using the old Kodak standard of 200 lux daylight exposure then whatever internal tests they suggest can be cut in half. They know very well they need to publish independent tests before the printers are released, not a year or two after.

Hp had Wilhelm make a statement on his site about how he expected the longevity of the HPZ9 to be really great, and that they were in test.  I think that was 2018. He never published the tests if they were done at all. So I wouldn’t hold my breath with Canon either, they might not like what they see.

John

I use ImagePrint and they provide profiles for Canon 2000 and 2600 for Hahnemuhle Photo Rag with MBK ink. Their profiles show the 2600 having a much darker black point. Not sure what to make of that given the review above.

[Ryan Mack]

He told me that the grays and the MK inks have not been changed but that the PK black and all colors had. On their promotional literature they say all the inks are new except the MK. Don’t know what to make of that

They really confused the messaging here. All the inks except MBK are *new* for the PRO-4600. MBK was already updated for the imagePROGRAF GP-4000 and is the same on the PRO-4600 but this MBK is *different* than what was on the PRO-4000/4100.

[Proeberphoto]

For what it's worth, I purchased a 4100 last year and did extensive comparisons between the 4100, 9570 and z9. Now I don't own a densitometer now but I have 45 years experience printing fine art photos,  running press tests and profiling offset presses before I retired. I saw no practical difference in apparent dmax for prints made on matt papers like Canson Arches 88 or other semi gloss papers. After receiving the 4100 I ran about 100 sample paper tests and found a huge difference in apparent dmax due to tonal range differences probably due to printer profile issues. One test, on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baruta had a dmax so black I considered it almost too black for my current exhibition.  So I think a lot of this is really subjective.

As for the yellowing mentioned above, I've seen it on many paper samples in sometimes less than a month if the paper was left out under flourescent lights. The more expensive papers like Arches 88 and Moab Entrada were immune to this phenomena.

[bellevuefineart]

I purchased a Canon 2100 a year ago, and my experience is that 99% of the time, the color on the two machines (Canon 2100/4100 and Epson 9570) are nearly identical. In most cases we can't tell a difference. Sometimes we'll throw in prints from the Canon 2100 for very discerning clients to see if they notice anything. And for all practical purposes, the colors on both are nearly identical and the Canon absolutely isn't lacking anything. But the ease of use of the Canon 2100, and the dual roll system makes it a huge asset in our office, and saves us a ton of time, and allows us to be much more flexible.

We've been using the Canon Pro 2100 for a year now for color proofing our art scans, and some light production, and the Epson 9570s for production. It's rare we run into a color different, and now we're ready to take the final leap to all Canon.

I just purchased two 4600s and will be printing them online in the next 2-4 weeks, and will be finally retiring my Epson 9570s. I've just had enough of the constant issues, and while people complain that a new head on the Canons is $800, the Epson 44" printers cost me $1500 a year in warranty, and it's always the head.

As for fine tuning, and dither patterns, and the whole Wilhelm institute thing, I personally feel that there's too much weight put onto this  pay to play testing scheme, and much of it is designed to promote FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), keeping people locked into an Epson solution that isn't necessarily better than Canon. And much of the banter I see on message boards like this is around edge scenarios in extreme testing situations that have a minimal impact for most people doing commercial photo and fine art printing. Even the black and white thing with Canon I think is over blown. I partner with a local printer that has been all Canon for years and their black and whites are fine. We also use them for 60" canvas prints, and have never ever had a complaint or issue with color discrepancy.

I feel like most of the conversations around minute technical differences in edge scenarios ignores the overall ROI impact of a commercial printing device, and the many things that cause misprints and customer dissatisfaction and employee frustration and time. For example the Canon prints faster (we can't run our Epson P9570s full speed). We have no head abrasion, no meandering paper, no skews, no tearing unryuu paper, no tearing paper off the rolls, and the Canon almost never cleans itself, and uses far less ink than the Epsons. And two rolls that don't need to be constantly unloaded, even when using a sheet, is time saving for a busy print studio in ways you can't imaging until you realize your gain in productivity.

I'm looking forward to bringing the Canon 4600s online, and will certainly share my experiences once I have them all profiled and up and running, but after a year with the Canon 2100 I'm 100% confident that it will be a smooth transition.

[JCD]

After a couple of months of using my 9570 everyday on all kinds of media bw and color, I have had zero significant issues of any kind so far. I really love this printer totally. I’m running both bi-directional out of their Print Layout program, which by the way only prints bi- directional, and just as much unidirectional for smaller portfolio prints, and both look great. My friend locally bought his about a month and a half before me and his unit prints perfectly as well. Neither of us are experiencing any clogging at all, no head strikes at all, no ghosting, and no paper ripping off the roll. I just finished a job on the Awagami Kozo Thin annd some Lyve canvas work, and it was all smooth sailing. I haven’t printed anything thicker than 320 gsm yet. We have not had to tweak any platen gap settings, vacuum settings, or anything else.

I only have two complaints, whoever designed this catch basket should be sent to Guantanamo 😕. And the other very minor thing is we have to set Portrait mode to print Landscape files. That needs to be fixed.  I believe this is an Apple issue ??  It happens with both Adobe programs and the Epson Layout software.

They really should revisit the ELP to print uni though, and please  don’t call that MAX quality when it isn’t.

In the larger picture of 44” printers this is nothing. I’m very happy with my workflow. I’m not a picture factory, but when I need a lot of big prints done fast it’s getting the job done easily.

What I really don’t understand is if all this delay was just a software or firmware mixup, why did it take three years to solve?  It just feels like there is more to the story, but I’m sure I don’t know, and we may never know.

John





quote author=alan a link=topic=143780.msg1260207#msg1260207 date=1719855489]
See my post directly below.  Probably time to toss my old Canon iPF 8400 and replace it.

Any opinions on the Canon 44" Pro 4600 versus the Epson 44" P9570?

Which clogs the most?  Life of the print heads and cost of replacement? 

Any other features that are nice?  (In the old days Canon has a software driver that included the ability to figure margins for printing canvas to stretching on bars.  A pretty minor feature in the scheme of things, but it was nice.)

Does Epson still have a straight feed for really thick stock?  And Breathing Color used to sell metal that could go through the Epson, but they appear to no longer stock that. 

Canon appears to be about $1,000 less.  I placed an order on Friday so I could use the $800 rebate which brings the price down to $3716.  I think Epson had a rebate but it has since expired.
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