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Justin Live photo
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721 Review
45 Karma

Review on Canon ImagePROGRAF Wireless Wide Format Profession by Justin Live

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Impressive printer.

I am a professional studio photographer, having been in the business for 37 years. I started my journey as a photo lab in a photo lab and in the days of film I had business pressures for other professionals and advertising agencies but with the advent of digital technology. I started sending all my work to professional labs. I recently decided that I need to get my work back in print. I've lost that connection to the end product that the print gives you. After a lot of research and watching YouTube videos, I settled on the Canon Pro 300. The main reason I chose them was the pigment based inks. I wanted to be able to tell my customers that the prints they receive from me will most likely outlive them. I was not disappointed. The print quality is amazing, just as good and many times better than the professional lab I use. Remember that high quality inkjet printing has a learning curve, but with all the information available, creating what you see on your monitor is easy. The printer is not a fast printer: in most cases this is not a problem, but for a job where you need to print, for example, 50 8x10 from a class reunion at the class reunion, this is important. Canon says 8x10 takes 1:45 with frames, takes longer without frames and my experience at 8x10 is just over 2 minutes. So for these 50 8x10s that's about two hours or more when you factor in all the little things like changing ink cartridges. It's almost as expensive or even more expensive than lab printing, especially for smaller prints, but there are two major advantages over lab printing. You have the print now and you control the quality. Seeing a print come out of a printer is just as exciting as seeing an image appear in a Dektol shell years ago. A few questions. The paint was a bit off. Several sources were out of print when I looked for it, but after some searching I was able to find it. It's also expensive. For a guy who has always used aftermarket inks, it was a little embarrassing to spend about $125 for a full set of inks, but they have the quality and durability I want. Another thing that was a bummer was Canon has a printer program called Professional Print and Layout Software that looks like a great addition to the Pro 300 except I couldn't get it to see the printer as a standalone app, nor will it work as a plugin for the latest version of Photoshop. But I printed directly from ON1 Photo Raw and it worked great. All in all, this is my first experience with a professional printer and I love it.

Pros
  • New
Cons
  • Slightly torn