Has anyone found any new information or reviews on the ipf5000. I have looked everywhere I know to look and haven't seen anything with any detail. I am patiently waiting to buy a new printer and would love to find out how the Canon is measuring up.

David

The printers are becoming available now. There are no reviews yet that I'm aware of.

I expect to have one for testing within days. I'll post initial impressions as soon as possible.

Michael

Thank you, I look forward to reading what you have to say.

David

I have been testing for a bit more than a week, and so far the results are outstanding. I had not had much time to do comparison prints to the Epson, but at the very least the image quality is just as good as the 4800. Add in things like user changable print heads, a (at least 2x print speed), the ability to leave the roll holder loaded and still use the cassette feeder, auto head checking, etc, etc.
I think Epson should be very worried. It is very impressive.

Danamr, have you tried switching media yet - between matte and non-matte? How does it handle that change? Have you had a chance yet to see how it performs in respect of bronzing, gloss differential? Are you using only Canon papers with it, or have you had a chance to test other papers?

Canon has apparently calibrated this printer with a custom built target of 69,000 patches. I would have imagined there would be limited gain after 3000 patches or so, but we will see.
The increase of gamut with the extra 3 colours over the Epson has not been reported to be very significant, but I await exact 3D plots. Linearity will be very important for high end users.
So will handling and performance with non-Canon media . I would like to see someone coming up with a pre head vacuuming of paper to reduce clogging from loose bits of cotton (or wood !) that both come with rolls and packed sheets and is produced within printers by the cutter. Nash Editions did this with the old Iris' years ago. There are a lot of nozzles in this new monster.
Epson , I note, is spending a lot on advertising, so things are hotting up at long last.
Bring on the lions!
Cheers,
Brian
www.pharoseditions.com.au

Just based on the tidbits I hear, I have a sense that Epson will need to spend on alot more than just advertising. The clogging issue could also be a very distinguishing parameter between these machines, but it takes months of operational experience to get a reliable handle on that variable - be it absolute or comparative.

I just recieved one on Friday and I had a little trouble with the print setup. That window is a lot more complicated then the Epson driver. There was some matermerism using High gloss Photo paper, but that may be my inexperience.

One thing I found was the roll holder is a $249.00 option, with the Epson 4800 it is standard equipment The machine ships with the print heads in separate packages and you install them. The ink that ships with the machine is 90mm carts (starter carts)

Overall the machine is well engineered and prints quite fast. I will be testing it further in the next few days

So far I have been working with Ilford Smooth Pearl, and more than anything else running profile targets to see what settings get the best gamut with the printer. My first trys show some extension over the Epson, but not huge. One issue is that there are areas where settings are not really explained. There is no explaination of what the special 1-5 settings do. It's my understanding they are mainly increasing ink density, and I have printed a couple of profile target sets to see what the difference is between 1-5 but have not had a chance to build the profiles to see what they look like.
I am not seeing any bronzing on the smooth pearl, i will be testing glossy media next week.
I have not experemented with matte papers yet, and I have some Crane Silver Rag I want to try on it too. I have gotten very little Canon stock in yet, and am still waiting for a roll feeder so I am a little limited in terms of testing so far.

I would say different rather than complicated in the print drivers. Are you using the plug in? I found that was a lot simpler work flow than the print driver. The prints I have seen on gloss don't show any issues, but I have not tried my self. What setting did you use? I suspect something like special 4 or 5 might get the best result.
I do agree that the printer seems well made.

I'm curious about how much ink was left in the starter cartridges after the ink lines were filled.

I am not close to running out, and have printed about 12 13x19 prints, plus a bunch of 3600 patch test targets.
Nice thing about the printer is the cartridges drain from the bottom, so there should be little waste.

I have not used the plug-in yet, but I will try it, if it makes things easier. IMHO the regular printer driver has to many screens that need to be changed. I am a total novice with this driver and it will take some time to get it right, especially in the area of paper selection. You get errors on the printer if the paper size is not the same on the printer and the driver

As for ink remaining after the initial fill there was about 75% left, The meter reads what is left in the carts, not whats in the lines, so I suspect there is really about 90% left

The software overrides the printer presets. The warnings give you information that something has changed from what you set in the printer so you can do something about it if you choose to. They can be turned off in the printer if you want.

Check out Red River Paper, redriverpaper.com. They just did a quick review of the iPF5000 that they just got. Apperently the Canon software even reports how much ink was used for a particular print.

Now when will the iPF9000 be available/shipping?

I've read the Red River review, as well as the one on InkjetArt. Unfortunately, both of them are thoroughly unimpressive as review efforts and do not provide a reliable basis for making an informed decision about whether to purchase this machine.

Mark,
I agree. I have indicated in this thread and elsewhere that we need at least accurate evaluations of gamut, dynamic range, ink linearity, nozzle clogging and cleaning cycles, and outgassing rather than the "Gee Whizz" reports that have come in so far. Resistance to abrasion and water should also be addressed. This sets a challenge for Michael , but I'm certain he is up to it. If Epson is indeed resting on it's rather imperfect laurels these reports are important to all of us.
Cheers,
Brian
www.pharoseditions.com.au

Brian, yes indeed. But to get a good fix on clogging and cleaning cycles these machines need to be tested under various conditions of usage and environment over a longer period of time than may be desirable for publishing a review on the other factors you mention. Like you, I am keen to see Michael's review at least for factors relating to print quality and user-friendliness of the printer itself. He explained why it will take some time, so let us just wait and see. I would be very surprised if Epson is just sitting around waiting to see what happens to its market share, but of course I have no idea what they may be cooking-up - likewise regarding HP for that matter. Times are getting interesting in this market niche.

Has anyone in the UK receivied their printer?

I've had one on order for what seems like ages and every two weeks or so since the end of April I've been told it will be shipping "the end of next week"

Hi Jamie. I was just wondering from wherabouts in the uk you ordered it.

Yes Jamie, me too! Canon had withdrawn them from the distributors at the 11th hour, apparently to install new software (it's rumoured that this first batch of 40 had mistakenly shipped with Japanese software!).

They were promised to land again this week and then be shipped same day, but it is now Friday and my dealer still cannot get a definite date from Canon. However I am reassured that we will still all get the special 'early adopters' price.

Here's hoping...

Martin

I just got word that dealers in Canada who have signed-up for them will start receiving a limited supply very soon.

I posted (thought I did anyway) yesterday - but it is not in here. I also just acquired the iPF5000. I do not have a lot of extra time as I work and then I learn this machine, so I will share as I am able. It is so advanced over any of the Epsons I have had. You can get prints from Inkjetart from this and x800 Epson to allow some comparison. I did that. That satisfied me that quality comparison was going to be a non issue (how good can good be to the eye anyway?). I think we are at the point now where the issues forward are to be about archiviability and flexibility and other issues - not perceptual quality (in other words how can it get better?). The options and software and plugin - are a lot of learning for me. I did try the plug in and it does much better on the image I printed than printing direct from PS did. I have done glossy and Summerset velvet uncoated test so far. Everything so far is so good. Other issues - need time to know. I heard there are only about 80 released in USA so far. I am wondering if a user group (like on Yahoo groups) will be formed? The EpsonWideFormat group showed little interest recently when asked about including this printer as part of the allowed topics. In summary as you can see I choose this - over the 4800 or anything HP offers (or will actually for the time being). At this point I am having Zero second thoughts about that. I suspect the Canon - if no bumps show up - will be very popular. And about the price - it comes with ethernet card, the 4800 does not. I wanted that card so actually the list price considering those, is pretty close.
Chow,
Gary

My review of the iPF5000 and a comparison with the Epson 4800 will be published here next Wednesday (June 21).

I found clear and visible image quality advantages as well as operational ones.

Stay tuned.

Michael

Thank GOD, well thank Michael I've been waiting to order the Canon (I use both matte and gloss papers) but have put it off since the other "reviews" have stated that it's NOT continuous tone and the samples certainly show the pixels.

G

I love the idea of user-replacable heads.

Even though I have one, I am looking forward the review.

I do not understand how anyone arrived at thinking or saying it is not continious tone after seeing even - not the highest and best settings-- prints results. I just was able to get one Summerset Velvet RW uncoated print (out of paper now) and the mat black ink and the other colors - all are nice and vibrant.

SVRW paper black measured 1.39 dmax. Epson hvy wt matte paper gave 1.54 dmax. I do not have ready references so I am not sure how these stack up - or even if I could extract better blacks than these. More time and experimenting will have to pass to answer that. More reason to look forward to Michaels review!
Gary

Koday Ultima hi-gloss - photo black (of course) 2.4 dmax.
Gary

"Photographic quality is lacking a little if you are up close. We did not see what could be called continuous tone in our prints. However, virtually impossible to tell that Prograf prints are not from a traditonal photo lab when viewed at normal distance."

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/infocenter/...rafipf5000.html

"The output from the iPF5000 looks pretty good. My initial review said that the prints were grainy, I'm going to rescind that. Comparing prints from the Epson 7800, 4000 and R2400; the iPF5000 looks almost the same in my opinion. Sure the prints are a bit grainy but all of the prints are if you zoom in far enough."

http://www.inkjetart.com/canon/wide/iPF5000.html#review

Granted I believe they only used Red River paper (I don't care for) but when you click on their samples the Canon shows much more grain IMO.

I've been waiting for Michael's review since I know it will be the best review available. I can't believe one of the BIG 3 can't come up with the "Holy Grail" of color printers (13x19 in 10 seconds, able to print matte or gloss without ink change, true continuous tone, 2000 year archival prints, perfect color accuracy, waterproof prints, self calibration, etc.) I'm NOT asking for much

I've been using Epson for many years now, it'll be weird buying a Canon, but then again it was weird buying my 1st Canon DSLR after shooting with Nikon for 25+ years.

G

The non-continuous tone thing probably came from the review at InkJetArt where they took a 0.25" x 0.375" section of an 8 x 10 print and blew it up to 4.167" x 5.931" @72dpi.

I've got a test print from them and looking at it with a 4X loupe, I am hard-pressed to see anything that looks like grain let alone what they show on their review. I would have to say that it is very continuous tone.

That's one, but Red River review also stated something similar.

"When viewed at the proper distance relative to the size of the print, the iPF5000 produces high quality photo reproductions. 9 out of 10 people could probably not tell they were looking at an inkjet print.

When viewed up close, prints off our Prograf 5000 showed a visible dot structure. We were suprised that they did not have a continous tone appearance. The dot pattern was present even at the top 2400x2400 quality setting (see left) and was more pronounced when we used resin coated photo glossy and luster papers. Dots were visible to a lesser extent on matte and art media. Under a loupe, the dot structure is revealed further, with dots overlapping far less often than on a competitive printer like the Epson 4800."

Canon 5000


Epson 4800


G

It's impossible to know what settings they used or whether of not their printer was properly alligned.

I can report that on the iPF5000 that I have this is definately not the case. These prints have been viewed by a number of very experienced and knowledable observers, and none see anything other than continious tone.

It's time to put this issue to bed once and for all.

Michael

Agreed. My father had many old sayings that he instilled in me, one was, believe 1/2 of what you see and none of what you hear. Michael your opinion I value and I'm sure your review will be complete and accurate. It was interesting to read the initial "reviews" in regards to the Canon IPF5000, because I thought I would be reading that this printer was going to set the standard by which all others would be judged.

G

There is no dot pattern. I don't know the methodologies others are using, but I'm in unidirectional 16 pass mode using Qimage and re-printing wedding prints I already did on my Epson R1800 on the IPF5000 and the IPF5000 pics look just as smooth even examined as close as you can get. This is true whether I print on Epsons premium luster or (what should tell if there would be a difference) on Epson Photo Glossy.

In addition, the color range difference is quite noticable in the shadows or in greens and blues not even in the shadows.

I printed some lake tahoe shots I did 2 weeks ago on both printers and they are just outstanding on the Canon. All the pics I've been printing where I've printed before, lay people and my graphics artist son prefer the Canon.

I have not played with the lower settings or bi-diretional yet to see if I can modify my workflow to produce dots. I'm not in a hurry anyway. I just wanted trouble free printing with a lower per page cost and a wider gamut. At this point, I'm getting exactly what I wanted.

My roll feeder addition is on order. I still can't print borderless yet. Also, the printer driver requires some careful print paper choices or the driver will not let you use the cassette tray, but that's just a learning curve issue and then a re-profile issue once you find a paper type that works.

Gone are the cartoony greens and the blues - just outstanding.

Here are the two specific pics where I noticed quite an improvement over what I had gotten from the Epson (and both printers are calibrated the same with Eye-one):

http://www.fototime.com/3E8A57AF6B5A338/orig.jpg

(that's the ones where the greens look very cartoony on my Epson R1800)

http://www.fototime.com/03E002F1A9A2CBC/orig.jpg

that's the one where the blues are outstanding on the Canon

Sorry - both pics are sRgb online. Printing aRGB on the Canon look better.

(edited to fix broken picture links)

There is a challange I am having with the ipF. I have been making profiles, so I am in the habit from Epson days of chosing usually gloss paper and heavywt (for heavier ink lay down) for printer media choices. So I do that, print targets, go to printing images - with the selected media choices - on 8.5x11 paper. Images are 8.1"x10.1". They are all clipped to about 8.1"x~8.8". This is using the top tray as so far these media choices I am using (and described) can not pull paper from the cassette - either top tray or roll (same as top tray anyway). There is a way around this of course, but at what quality cost? Also at the moment it is confusing as I have found no references to tell me about this - and Friday Canon CS actually said I was the problem - but I am certain it is not me - it is indeed features of the media choices and related settings. All I really want to do is put a lot of glossy paper in the cassette (8.5x11) and print at a high quality, photo images at 8.1x10.1. So far I have not been able to achieve that using sheets. Will review w/ Canon CS Monday - but like I said they don't seem to be up to speed about this either - at least not James (there are only 2 reps for this printer at this time I was told).

If you John have discovered anything please share or email me direct if open to it. Or any other of us new adaptors.

Gary

I ended up using the Photo Paper set of choices so that I could profile paper and use the cassette. The two I have profiled and set up so far are the Epson Premium Luster and the Epson Premium Glossy.

As you ran into, if I pick the choices closest to those it would only let me load in the manaul tray.

Well, forget that. I want to have a stack to work with, not one at a time.

Picking the Photo Paper 'prefix' in the paper names allowed me to use the cassette and the profiles that I got were good with complete ink lay down.

I'm not sure the technical limitations on paper thickness etc, that make so many of the choices be forced to be the manual top tray. But the work around above worked fine for those 2 specific paper choices.

I went and had a look at one today. It's pretty big. There was a definite dot pattern in the prints I saw. I had them print out in 16 pass mode on a gloss paper. Not sure if it was uni or bi-directional. Given both you and Michael are seeing continuous tone it suggests it's not the printer that's the problem. Which only leaves the image or user error. The image they were printing was an 8-bit tiff given to them by Canon. They didn't have profiles for the paper they were using though as they'd only opened up the printer yesterday. I think they were still learning how to use it.

They should have profiles done by next week so I'll take an image of my own in to be printed on the new Innova Gloss Michael just reviewed.

Someone mentioned that the Photoshop plugin allows you to print 16-bit. I was wondering if that was the problem. Given you are using Qimage I guess it probably isn't...

BTW your links didn't seem to work for me.

Justin.

The several prints I've seen have ZERO dot pattern - NADA - NONE - on either matte or glossy prints.

I'm not saying people who see dots have vision problems. Perhaps there is a particular set of circumstances which can cause this phenominon, and those who haven't seen it simply haven't printed under those specific conditions. We have no way of knowing yet, without directed testing.

I'm very interested in questions about paper feed and centering. I'm wondering whether any who own the printer have tried to print with Epson Enhanced Matte 8.5*11 and A3 sheets in the tray and cassette and been able to stack the paper and produce centered prints.

I have 5 images printed from a demo model today and there is just NO visible dots, Ziltch.

four of the images were printed used the Standard Quality 4 pass setting on gloss paper and still no dots visible and the areas of large colour were what i would call continuous tone.

Now having said that a 1600dpi scan i did of one of the standard quality images does show what looks like dots, remember this is a 1600dpi scan though.


Just waiting on MR to post the review before pulling the credit card out.
cheers
Phil

I have printed even on plain paper - no dots. I am wildly guessing maybe the actual paper?? Anyway (not that I want to) I have NOT discovered how to have dots or other than continious tones.
Gary

hmmm...could be the paper, that's why I want to test on something like photo rag and Innova gloss. Could very well be the way it was printed, the sales guy picked a paper size and then used photoshop's scale to fit when he printed.

The dots were visible at arms length in areas of solid colour. I'm only interested in what's visible to the naked eye, not under a loupe, so I wasn't trying to pixel peep.

Anyway, Phil's scan seems to indicate there should be no dots visible to the naked eye. That's an incredible amount of detail in what would be a fairly small area of paper.

Justin.

John -
thank you! It works wonderfully. And the GlossyPaperHvywt profiles work just fine.
Canon CS - Donald - said he has printed ~500 8x10s so far from the 90ml carts, various levels of settings but all full color full size, and he still has roughly 1/2 full carts. This suggests good mileage from our ink.

Are you printing from the driver mostly? I have been mostly printing from the PS plug-in which I believe to be generally at least far superiour to the usual driver. I am shooting from the hip maybe, but the limited experiences I have had, this does described what I am noticing. Nevertheless, the images are looking so outstanding and I am so pleased to this point.
Gary

PS - (sorry I forgot this) -

Printing from the top tray did indeed require approximately 7/8" margin lead in and 1.25" margin exit. For the 8.5x11 I was using it meant that a full 10" length print was not possible (close of course). Print length was ~8.85".
Gary

I'm printing using QImage to the regular driver. I did try a print for grins from DPP with the plug-in, but not having Canon paper the results where not color matched at all on the Epson paper.

Printing with Qimage, turning all ICC off on the printer driver, tell QImage to use the profile created with Eye-one for that paper and pass settings (in my case 16pass) works great.

I'll have to re-profile and try the 4 pass and 8 pass settings, though. 16 pass unidirectional does not make this a speed demon. I don't know where the diminishing returns are for going bi-directional and 8 or 4 pass. But the speed should be mathematically higher if I try those other settings.

I'm assuming, though I haven't tested it, that bi-directional vs unidirectional should have no impact on a color profile. Just a safer alignment of dots. It'd be a lot of work to profile for uni/bi/4/8/16 or 6 combinations per paper I'm using. Ultimately, it'd be nice to print faster, and the type of paper may well have an effect on perceived quality at the different speed settings.

The 4 pass sample posted up looks pretty good. 4 pass,bi-directional should be about 8 times faster printing then what I'm doing now.

John -

When I talked with Donald this morning - he mentioned the Easy settings (I have always used advanced till now) in the driver - (printing preferences, choose paperplus, then easy settings) and mentioned using the digital camera setting instead of highest. I did, and my 8x10s are stunning with the profiles already made.

I think use the profiles and work downward with settings to see where the threshold is. So far the easysettings-digital camera is all I have experimented with.

Have you thought about joining posting at the CanonWideFormat (yahoo) list? We could be sharing this info more widely? Either way - I appreciate sharing, it is speeding me up!
Gary

I'll try easy mode. I don't see how that will get the colors as good as I'm getting with a custom profile matched to the paper. But it's worth a sheet of 8.5x11 premium luster to try it.

Then I'll try a 4pass bidirectional and time it compared to my normal workflow with my existing profile.

Then I'll do my normal 16pass unidirectional and time it.

Not tonight - but tomorrow night I should have time.

Oh, I fixed my sample pic links in the earlier posting that showed the greens and blues that I printed much better on the Canon compared to my Epson.

I'll repeat them here for people that tried the links last time.

Here are the two specific pics where I noticed quite an improvement over what I had gotten from the Epson (and both printers are calibrated the same with Eye-one):

http://www.fototime.com/3E8A57AF6B5A338/orig.jpg

(that's the ones where the greens look very cartoony on my Epson R1800)

http://www.fototime.com/03E002F1A9A2CBC/orig.jpg

that's the one where the blues are outstanding on the Canon

Sorry - both pics are sRgb online. Printing aRGB on the Canon look better.

(edited to add broken link to two sample pics that produced pics everyone instantely preferred the Canon prints to the Epson)

Argh...it's been the 21st for sooo long here in Australia....

Agreed.... 21st here in good old Aus............

Beg Plead Cry....

Actually we should let Michael have a really nice sleep and post a nice review

Looking forward to reading about the printer the Credit Card just bought..

Cheers
Phil

I needed some additional information from Canon, which didn't arrive until yesterday afternoon. It's now morning of the 21st here in Toronto, and I expect to spend much of the day finalizing the report. It will be online late this afternoon (so still technically the 21st).

Michael

Michael,

Myself and Justin are just keen to read the review and it's just so hard when we have about 18hrs lead time on you....

At least i have something to look forward to reading at morning tea time tomorrow.

I have ordered my printer anyway based on the sample prints from my own images, and to me that is the only real test... do you the buyer like what the printer does.

I no doubt say this for a lot of people, thanks for a quite prompt review of what should be a very interesting printer for many people.

Cheers and best wishes for the day.