Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Review

Since 2000, I've been using an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 on my Macs. Back in the day the images were pretty impressive and I loved having a wide format printer to print my photos with. I stocked up on all sorts of paper in different sizes. After printing a only small handful of prints the stock cartridges needed replacing, at some $50 a pop - and worse, the color cartridge had to be replaced as a whole, even if just one color was out. So I got a CIS (Continuous Ink System, a.k.a. CFS) setup. The inks worked well but I didn't quite match the profile of the stock inks. The yellow tank leaked, so I got a replacement from the manufacturer - the replacement was no better!

But in all this time the sad reality is that I never ended up really printing anything too worthwhile. No matter the amount of fiddling in Photoshop, selection of ICC profiles, manufacturer of paper - would result in a really decent print. It came fairly close, but was typically too dark or some (if not all) colors were slightly off.

Then it started to get finicky. The bronze bushing would fall out of the print head, jamming it. The ink supply tubes occasionally rubbed on the bottom plate, also resulting in a jammed up head. The ink nozzles would clog constantly, even with weekly printing - requiring ridiculous cycles of cleaning the heads and printing a nozzle check pattern. ENOUGH!

After my usual silly amount of research I plunked down some coin at Newegg on Monday and ordered the Canon PIXMA Pro9000 and a combo pack of replacement cartridges, along with a 120-count box of 4x6 Photo Paper Plus Glossy - received them yesterday. After about 15 minutes time setting up the hardware and installing the latest drivers and software downloaded from Canon's Website (I bypassed the CD) I was ready to click PRINT.

I loaded up a random shot from my archives, ran a quick USM on the full-sized image and printed - default settings. Out of the box, the printer printed the most faithful, delightful print I've ever seen come out of an inkjet! And this wasn't even on Canon paper - it was crappy Kodak paper for which I didn't have an ICC profile for. I next tried some leftover off-brand Staples-bought paper. This time it wasn't quite so good, but the colors were decent. Then I tried some leftover Epson Premium Photo
Glossy Paper on a different image... Perfect - and I still didn't have a properly matched paper/profile! For laughs I tried printing plain text and even a photo on plain paper... Good stuff once again sprang forth.

What boggles the mind is that without even twiddling settings or having matching ICC profiles - this printer bested anything the Epson could muster.

As for the printer itself, it's huge. But it's very solid. Looks modern, professional and fits in well with today's colors (aluminum, black, silver). Setup was easy, though a little more involved than your typical printer. I typically don't print large formats so I keep the back paper exit closed, which saves a good bunch of desktop space. Opened fully, you need quite a bit of room. Canon thoughtfully put little wheels on the back/underside of the printer to make moving it around easier.

Paper can be fed on top via the automatic sheet feeder, and the printer detects your paper size automatically - nice. You can stock it full of thinner media and run a batch (a somewhat unique feature). If you printer thicker or larger media such as the fine art papers, you feed through the front (and exit in the rear) for a totally flat paper path.

It does support PictBridge, though I'll probably never use it unless I'm in a real hurry or something. Nice to know it's there, though. I only wish this printer had an Ethernet port - but you can purchase all manner of print servers to make it networkable for ~$60. The lack of a FireWire port is no biggie - in testing it proves no faster than USB anyway. As with most printers, Canon does not supply a USB cable.

I'll be picking up some more Canon paper (as the ICC profiles are all provided and you can download more) and testing this printer further in the coming weeks and update...

But first impressions are that this printer is outstanding in every way!

I got the printer for $355 - $455 with a $100 rebate. The full replacement set of cartridges was $76.

It should be worth noting that thanks to a deal between Canon and Epson, only the European versions can print on CD-R/DVD-R... But with a quick trip to eBay you can pick up the "Canon CD Tray E" and make a quick firmware/software mod - you can be up and running for $<20. I plan to do this at some point.

I bought the Pixma Pro9000 printer with my Canon 5D to get the rebates. I never used the printer was was really impressed by it (it is huge). I considered keeping it, but the $500 in rebates were too good to pass up.

I am still intrigued by the idea of having a Pixma, even though I know that the economics of printing at home is more expensive than having a lab do it. There is just something about the convienence of being able to print a pic whenever you need one. Right now I don't think that convience is worth a couple of hundred dollars, but that might change in the future.

Thanks for the write up. I sold the printer for $300 (new in box) locally. The guy who bought it ironically shot with a Nikon, but he said the Canon printers had the best color renditions so he bought mine.

Yeah, Canon's got (or had) a great thing going there with the rebates. If only I wanted a 5D, I wouldn't have minded the printer and a 24-105mm in the deal.

I printed some more stuff last night, this time on a) Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy, b) Canon Photo Paper Matte and c) Epson 720dpi Paper (similar to Canon High Resolution). I'm still VERY impressed. Color matching to a profiled display is dead-on (using the provided Canon ICC profiles) and the detail is sweet. On the Epson paper I printed a network diagram that uses some high-res images of servers... The biggest of which is maybe an inch, squared. Looking through a magnifying lens, you can make out the little logos, LEDs, vent holes, etc.

I also printed plain text - on Hammermill Premium Inkjet Paper. Also looks very nice, no jaggies anywhere and the text is fairly dark (though I wouldn't say laser-dark). It just wasn't the fastest print. This thing is made for photos - and it spits them out faster than anything else I've seen. If you need to do a lot of text printing, the jury's still out on that one...

The testing continues!

Printing at home isn't the most economical perhaps, you're right - but being able to produce results immediately and on-the-spot is hard to beat. I've got a new house with lots of blank walls that I want to populate with photos I've taken over the years, so this thing will see a fair amount of action.

Give Ilford papers a try too. They have icc profiles available on their site. I got excellent results with this combo.

PS..........I love mine too!

I've heard that Ilford Galerie Classic Pearl is very nice, I plan to give that a try... I would've picked up some Canon Photo Paper Semi-Gloss but couldn't find any (at a local Staples at least).

I'm restricting my paper purchases to those manufacturers that supply an ICC profile for their paper and the Canon PIXMA Pro9000, since I don't have a print-calibrating device (just the Pantone HueyPRO for displays).

So Kodak is a bust - they're way out of date. Their paper seemed to produce good color on the one photo I tried, however, it was a little on the dark side. Some other common online sources are also out for the same reason - if they even offer ICC profiles... Such as InkJetPress (or something like that, a common "no name brand" found at Staples that I had laying around). The colors were good, but the print quality was pretty weak (the ink droplets "clumped" a little, producing a sort of grain).

Double Negative wrote in post #5347579
Printing at home isn't the most economical perhaps, you're right - but being able to produce results immediately and on-the-spot is hard to beat. I've got a new house with lots of blank walls that I want to populate with photos I've taken over the years, so this thing will see a fair amount of action.

Yeah, a B-sized printer is great for covering the walls, gifts, whatever! It's very good when you have a calibrated system and the prints are right on!

Another good reason to have a high quality photo printer at home/studio is to proof prints before sending off a job. You don't have to have B-sized to do this, but you need something of high quality (and a calibrated system) as well as a reliable outside print service.

^ So true. It's nice to be able to proof your stuff before ordering en masse.

I used to have a B&W darkroom and miss it terribly. I stopped just short of going color. Now I have my long-awaited color darkroom... But it's digital.

How is the black and white printing? When I worked for Canon, I printed some B&Ws on the 9500 and they took ages. Only way we were told to explain it to customers was that the printer was rendering the photo itself in the printer to get the best representation of a B&W image.

I haven't tried B&W yet, but I'm very interested as it's something I want to do a lot more of (B&W shooting/printing). The Pro9500 is better than the Pro9000 due to having three blacks: matte, glossy and grey whereas the Pro9000 only has black. If I were to do primarily B&W and semi-gloss/matte printing, I'd have gone for the Pro9500.

The Pro9500 is half the speed of the Pro9000 out of the box. To print B&W "properly" on the Pro9000 you should check the "Greyscale" checkbox, which limits the printer to only using the black cartridge... Which slows the printer down quite a bit, but also reduces any chance of a color cast in your print. When using all available colors you had the added option of printing warm/cool-toned prints and of course, the speed is at full.

The Pro9500 is at the top of the heap for B&W - but you'll be waiting a little while longer... From what I understand though, the results are totally worth the wait.

the 9500 is not designed to do gloss printing. IMO this is a big problem in terms of flexibility. Thought it should be mentioned.

^ Right, it's a pigment ink based printer, not dye-based like the Pro9000. So if you plan to do glossy go for the latter as it does a much better job. That's not to say the Pro9500 can't do glossy, but it's not great. This is one of the reasons I chose to go with the Pro9000.

Epson gets around this by using a "gloss optimizer" cartridge... Whee, another expensive cartridge that runs out every other week!

so can the 9000 print borderless 11x14?
kimmy