|
Canon’s new long life Chromalife 100 inks were only available on certain members of their inkjet range when I bought a Canon Pixma iP5200. (most of their supposedly serious photo printers still use the BCI-06 inks) This isn’t really intended as a professional quality printer but, in my opinion, long life inks were the thing Canon needed most, so I had to give it a try. To me Canon photo prints get nearest to looking like conventional photographic prints but their weaknesses have always been poor black density and worries over long term stability. So a new inkset which promised to cure both problems was worth a £ 120 impulse buy. My moment of weakness turned out to be a blessing - Results from the new inks are superb - even with only 5 colours - it has 2 blacks - photographs printed with the Canon Pixma iP5200 are among the best inkjet photo prints I’ve ever seen. Plus they’re delivered at lightning speed and the ink costs are very reasonable. What more could I ask for? When can I have an A3+ version?
To get back to the tests here, results on all of my 3 top glossy papers are excellent, with very little to choose between Ilford Galerie Smooth Glossy, Fuji Multijet Premium Glossy and Canon Photo Paper Pro. One other old weakness of Canon’s prints was a lower Dmax than Epson or HP photo prints, and in this test the Ilford paper gives the strongest blacks. Ilford also deserve some praise for selling it’s inkjet paper the way they used to sell photographic paper - in boxes of 100 sheets in a decent strong box. Oh that the other makers - especially Canon - would please do the same.
|
