There was no shortage of superlatives in Canon's announcement of this printer, with descriptions of its ink-on-paper prowess so flagrantly coloured that I couldn't help being a little sceptical. However, after getting my hands on a pre-release review unit, I was please to find Canon's claims turned out for the most part to be right on the money.
The first impressive element here is that Canon's paper profiles for the Pro-1 are pretty much spot on. I've had some minor problems in the past with Canon's profiles but not in this case. With the exception of the profile for the Museum Etching paper, which seemed to over-flatten the soft proof, the combination of using the bottled profiles with on-screen proofing using Aperture or Photoshop provided a reliable and accurate colour workflow.
Of course, if you're really fussy, you'll make your own profiles and Canon bundles software to help with this. But, out of the box, you should get up and running with a fairly reliable colour workflow with little effort. This is just as well because wastage will cost you dearly. The Pro-1 printhead is fed by 12 LUCIA pigment ink tanks: Photo Black, Photo Magenta, Photo Cyan, Yellow, Red, Cyan, Magenta, Matt Black, Light Grey, Grey, Dark Grey and Chromium Optimiser. At $44.99 each for the new large capacity tanks and $39.99 for the Optimiser, you want to be sure you're not throwing away prints through inaccurate soft-proofing.
By "large capacity" Canon means 2.5x the tank capacity of earlier Pixma Pro models, which translates to less time spent changing tanks, which is welcome. The three grey tanks provide very subtle tonal renderings, which is evident in colour prints and especially in black and white. I was very impressed with the printer's colour gamut, which is weighted nicely towards dark tonal values. Indeed, test prints with dark blues I made on the Pro 9500 aren't a patch on the Pro-1's, with the newer Pixma printer able to render dark blues that the 9500 pushed into the black. Even though the Pro-1 handles dark tonal values with authority, it still produces crisp detail in highlights as well, which was clearly evident on gloss papers. But most impressive of all was the deep blacks this printer delivers. Beautiful, rich blacks. Also, black and white prints are actually black and white. On three different papers with a range of black and white images, I couldn't detect any underlying hue. On fine art paper, such as Canon's Photo Rag or Museum Etching stock, the Pro-1 delivers images of great nuance and this might be the first desktop printer I've used that competes with the giclee prints from my pro lab.
In a big hurrah for Canon, the Chromium Optimiser makes a positive addition to the ink tank line-up. Canon lists a few benefits to having the optimiser but chief among them in my book is the near-elimination of bronzing on semi-gloss or gloss papers. It was the single biggest bugbear with earlier models of Canon printers and it's a relief to see it finally overcome — or at least almost overcome, because it doesn't work so well on third-party gloss paper. Canon's recommendation to stick with its own consumables is well-advised for best results. Canon claims the optimiser not only overcomes bronzing but makes images appear sharper due to an optical effect. I don't doubt Canon's claims but I really can't see it. Perhaps a younger set of eyes would see comparison prints with a more favourable assessment. Let's just say the jury's out on that one.
The optimiser can be set to spray over the entire print or be used creatively, such as spraying a watermark. When printing to fine art papers, the optimiser isn't used at all.
Print speed is improved over earlier A3+ models. This is achieved through having the Pro-1's tanks built into the cabinet's front cavities much like Epson does with its 2880 and similar models, with long feed lines to the printhead. This considerably lightens the load on the printhead transport mechanism and allows speedier inking. Of course, it also means that your first set of ink tanks lose about 20 per cent of their volume just to fill those feed lines, so be prepared for that.
Looking at results from previous printer tests, I found the Pro-1 about 20 per cent faster than the Pro 9500 Mk II, with an A3+ colour print at highest quality settings completing in 5:50, timed from when the paper was clutched by the paper transport. Set-up is a cinch, even though the heavy, multi-lingual starter manual makes it appear at first more difficult. Being a single-use printer (as opposed to a multi-function printer), it's just a matter of plugging it in, connecting a USB or Ethernet cable, inserting the ink tanks, fitting the print head and configuring the printer driver. The only hiccup was the driver installer warned me the software wasn't compatible with OS 10.7.2 and directed me to Canon's support pages to download the latest driver. Easy enough, though I then had to head back to the CD to install Canon's other bundled software, which required some folder mining to get at the installers that were blocked in the first place by the batch installer. No big deal if you know how to reveal invisible files but the batch installer should offer the option to bypass the driver and install other software instead of running you into a brick wall.
On the technical side, the Pro-1 boasts some impressive features. It supports 1200ppi input resolution which, Canon says, reflects the "increasing number of pixels available on professional cameras and produces smoother prints with high resolutions of up to 4800 x 2400dpi".
The Pro-1 has an Optimum Image Generating (OIG) system to analyse the photo colour and precisely calculate the optimum ink combination and volume of ink droplets, squirted through Canon’s FINE print head that has 12,288 nozzles. It also features three colour modes: a Photo Colour print mode that boosts colours in a way that should charm amateur users; a Linear Tone mode that doesn't mess with your image adjustments; and an ICC Profiles mode that lets users utilise paper-specific colour profiles The rear tray takes up to 20 sheets of photo paper, while the manual feed slot accepts photo paper up to 356mm wide and heavier fine art papers. I was pleased to see the printer will grab paper when there is only one sheet in the feeder. I had no trouble feeding Canon's heavy Museum Etching paper into it. A relief, given the trouble I've previously had with similar papers. The Pro-1 also accepts a tray for printing 12cm CDs/DVDs. For those who care about such things, the Pro-1 borrows from high-end large-format professional printers by using a mist fan with an air circulation system for improved paper handling and has some other tricks under the hood, such as monitoring the print head temperature to maintain consistent colour. If this sort of thing turns you on, check out the Pro-1's tech specs for more impressive printer Pr0n.
An Ethernet port enables networking among a workgroup and the Pro-1 prints with new LUCIA pigment inks. Canon is aiming this printer at "the enthusiast photographer and the professional user with a low-volume print demand". There's no doubt in my mind such users would be satisfied with the Pro-1 but they will want to keep a close eye on their print yield.
I've always been sceptical about yield and cost-per-print figures because of the variables at play. For instance, if, like mine, your images are dark and moody with large swathes of black, you'll be replacing the black and grey tanks frequently. If your images are light and open, as is typical of, say wedding photography, your ink tanks will deplete along a different pattern. Thus, one photographer's cost-per-print can be considerably different to the next. That said, the fact a full set of inks for the Pro-1 costs about $530, add to that the cost of paper stock, and this printer can be an expensive beast to feed.
During a week of print production, I exhausted a set of tanks by printing a mixture of sizes on gloss, semi-gloss and art papers, equivalent to 58 A3 prints. By my calculation, if all those prints had been made on Canon's Photo Paper Plus at $40 per pack of 20 sheets, the cost-per-print would be about $11. Including other minor cost factors, this compares favourably with pro lab pricing, which is a couple of dollars more per A3 print.
So at the very least, the Pro-1's economy is right. However, economy isn't the driving motivation for blowing 15 C-notes on a high-end A3+ printer. It's more about creative expression. It's about being in charge of the photographic process from end-to-end, about seeing your initial photographic vision realised as hard copy, and on that count I really can't think of anything bad to say about this printer.
Canon is yet to announce the date for availability of the Pixma Pro-1 in Australia.
