This little nugget comes from Tony Bonanno on the Canon IPF5000 Wiki:
http://www.canonipf5000.wikispaces.comIt is reproduced here without any permission of any kind
While browsing through the 'supplement' magazine, "After Capture" which is part of the January issue of Rangefinder, I came across a very well written review of the iPF5000 by Steven Katzman.
Mr. Katzman highlights some of the changes that accompanied the new firmware, pretty much the same items that have been discussed on the WIKI.. EXCEPT one that I hadn't come across and hadn't picked up on in my own printing. THE SCREEN / DITHERING PATTERN HAS IMPROVED! Apparently, the 2400 x 1200 16 and 8 pass mode shows a finer and better dot pattern in both color and B&W. The print speed is slightly slower, but I'd much rather have the quality than the speed at these settings. The 8 bit 1200 x 1200 pattern is unchanged allowing maximum speed.
Is it for real? Tonight I printed a B&W test image on glossy paper uprezed to 600ppi using the 16 bit plug-in at max quality. I had a print of the same file with the same settings made with the old firmware. Comparing the two prints with a loupe clearly showed a finer dot pattern with the new firmware.
You may recall that some folks were critical of the dot pattern in early reviews, although it truly was a non-issue for real world viewing. Anyway, since folks were using Epson K3 printers in their comparisons, I printed the same test file on a new Epson PRO 3800 here in the studio. The 3800 is suppose to be Epsons BEST dithering pattern to date. The new Canon dithering pattern gives results very similar to the Epson 3800 at 1440 "superfine". At 2880, the Epson is smoother, but I doubt the difference will be visibly "better".
--John
