Review Canon Pixma Pro9000

When many people speak about printers, they discuss them in terms of printing documents and Internet pages, but with more and more high-resolution cameras around, it's becoming more common for individuals to print large photos at home.

If you'd like those big prints to look nice, which means purchasing a medium-format printer, such as Canon's Pixma Pro9000. Though it bears the Pixma Pro moniker, the Canon Pro9000 replaces the Canon i9900, which like this printer, is an eight-ink dye-based printer. If you require on pigment-based inks, Canon now offers the Pixma Pro 9500, it costs more and uses a pigment-based printer ink set.

Compared with the i9900, the Pro9000 is a bit larger, checking in at 26 by 7.6 by 14 inches with all its trays closed. That means you'll need to devote a decent amount of workplace space to this printer. As well, if you plan to utilize the printer's front straight-loading path, you'll need to continue 15.7 inches apparent behind the printer, while you need room for the front-loaded paper to extend out the back.

Though this can be awkward, some photo buffs want to keep some fine-art documents flat instead of feeding them through the normal L-shaped way, and the front-loading path is a welcome addition over the i9900, which didn't provide such a paper path.

When Epson has always had a reputation for getting more photo and art paper options than Canon, Canon has bolstered its offerings lately. In contrast to the available paperwork for the similarly cost, but pigment-based, Epson R1800, the Pro9000 can take a similar number of official Canon papers as that rival can admit Epson papers.

However, while both present standard options like glossy, semigloss, and matte, the alternatives beyond that are slightly different. For example, Epson presents two sizes of scrapbooking paper, one of which is sized to the scrapbooking typical of 12x12 inches. Canon provides photo stickers and T-shirt transfers (for iron-ons). If you intend to utilize any out-of-the-ordinary papers, it could behoove you to explore the products of Canon and its rivals at a local camera store, or on their Web sites. If you're wanting to print onto CDs or DVDs, you may have to skip the Pro9000, since it does not offer that feature.

Possibly the most impressive thing about this printer is its speed. In Standard print quality mode, I was able to make a bordered letter-size print in 1 minute, 7 seconds. Stepping up to High print quality, that time lengthened to 2 minutes, 16 seconds. The Pro9000 turned out High quality borderless letter-size prints in 2 minutes, 39 seconds. Full 13x19-inch borderless prints took 2 minutes, 47 seconds in Standard quality mode and 5 minutes, 13 seconds in High print quality mode.

There's been a lot of discuss lately about how long inkjet prints last. But the truth is that while dye-based prints, like those from the Pixma Pro9000, normally get print permanence scores about 50 years (Wilhelm Imaging Study completed its testing like of this Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II Review), and most pigment-based prints end up with evaluations over 100 years, the C-prints that most people don't forget from the film days would fade well before either dye- or pigment-based inkjet prints.

If you don't mind the shorter present life of dye-based prints, or the paper restrictions of the Canon system, then the Canon Pixma Pro9000 fantastic alternative for a medium-format inkjet printer.



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