[LRflex] Re: A personal Canon Pixma printer review
- From: Philippe AMARD <philippe.amard@xxxxxxxx>
- To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:32:00 +0100
Miha Golobic wrote:
Dear Flexers,
Because I only ask questions, I have decided to share with you a
personal review of my new Canon Pixma iP4600 photo printer, which I
got on saturday as my birthday gift :-))))
Happy birthday Miha - had we known about this ...
Thanks for sharing your experience with the printer
Amitiés
Philippe
This printer belongs to Canon family photo printers (iP1900, iP2600,
iP3600 and ip4600). Max resolution is 9600 x 2400 dpi, max print
format is A4, price is 100 EUR/USD.
First of all, this is my only photo printer, so I can`t compare the
results to any other printer. But as a "photographer" I can compare
prints with RA-4 prints (let`s say Fuji Chrystal Archive paper).
Instalation and operation: Very easy. You turn the printer on, insert
the 5 cartriges (4 for photo printing, and a bigger black one for
regular text printing), turn the printer off. Insert the CD in to your
PC/Mac and follow the instruction, you basically just press "Next"
several times. Then you conect the printer and the computer and turn
the printer on again. That`s it, you are ready to print.
The software suplied with the printer is very straightforward too. In
the main menu you select what you want to print (photos, album,
calendar, CD,...). In our case, you select fotos (by clicking the
icon). In the next step you select a photo from the folder, then you
selct the paper (you have all Canon brands plus some other) and the
paper format. In the last step you select the layout (bordless,
borded, 2,4,...prints per sheet, index print,...) and click "print".
If you click the Printer icon on your desk top, you have acces to the
printer settings. I set the quality to "1" or finest and I also set
"halftoning" to "diffusion" intead to "auto". I do not want to mess
with the color profiles or drivers.
Print quality: What can I say, It`s amazing! I downloaded some huge
files made with Canon EOS 1Ds III camera (from dpreview.com
<http://dpreview.com/>) to test the resolution. I can honestly say
that I didn´t expect so much. By judging the resolution, I couldn`
tell prints made with my canon and those made by photo lab on Fuji RA
paper apart. I would even say, that you need a good photo lab to match
the resolution of this printer.
Colors are great too. They didn`t exactly match my computer screen,
but my screen is not calibrated. The prints were a tiny bit warmer
compared to my screen, with slight more magenta in the blue sky. The
caucasian skin colour is perfect for my taste. Very similar to fuji
portrait films.
I was using HP premium plus (their best) and Avery Zweckform paper.
The later has more gloss, but I prefer HP. I should use Canon paper,
but It was not avaliable locally on saturday.
I would like to stress once more that prints made with this Canon
printer leave little to desire!
Speed: It is very fast. It takes about 90s to print one A4 print in
full res.
Build: It`s made of fragile black shiny plastic. It looks expensive
and doesn`t occupie too much space on your desk.
As with all fast inkjet printers, you should put it on a stable desk,
otherwise the desk will shake as the head runs left and right!
Would I recommend one: You already know the answer :-))
I might add that in the digital era, everybody shoots a lot more and
print much less. So many photos never see the light of day. And photos
look much better on paper than on LCD screen...
That`s it.
Best,
Miha
O yeah, running costs: pretty high! you can print about 50 A4 prints
with one set of cartridges. All four cost about 45 EUR. You can change
them separately.
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