Canon iPF5000 Printer Review

A First Look and Appraisal
In May, 2006 Canon began shipping theiPF5000printer. This is a 12 ink, pigment-based, 17" carriage photographic printer capable of printing in 16 bit mode. It is physically large, moderately priced (for what it does), and, as will be seen, surpasses just about every other fine-art inkjet printer yet available, in terms of both image quality and convenience of features.
This review is based on three weeks of almost daily use of the iPF5000. By way of background, over the past 10 years I have been using a range of Epson printers, including, most recently, the Pro 5500, 4000, and 4800 models. These, especially the currentEpson Pro 4800model, will be my points of comparison.
You'll notice that this review in fact makes extensive comparison's with theEpson 4800. The reason for this is that the iPF5000 is so directly targeted at the 4800 that not to do so would miss the clear challenge that Canon has thrown down. (Do you think that the model numbering of this new...