11X17 Inkjet Printer

Canon began shipping the 11X17 Color Inkjet printer. 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 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer. 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 current Epson Pro 4800 model, will be my points of comparison.

You’ll notice that this review in fact makes extensive comparison’s with the Epson 4800. The reason for this is that the 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer 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 printer was accidental?)

Some Background

When the first Epson Photo printer was introduced, and Iris prints gave us the silly name giclee, we have seen more advances in the technology of colour printing than in the entire previous century. Inkjet prints have gone from being ephemeral – fading and discolouring in a matter of months in some cases, to now having estimated life spans without noticeable fading, of more than 100 years, longer than any previously known colour print technology. C prints using Fuji Crystal Archive, and Cibachrome / Ilfochrome, much vaunted in the past for their longevity, are lucky to reach half that value.

Part of this advance in technology was due to the introduction of the latest generation of pigment-based inks possessing a colour gamut comparable to that of dye-based inks. Epson’s current K3 ink set as used in the Epson 4800 has, till now, been the pinnacle of the revolution in fine art inkjet printing. That printer (and its larger siblings) provide an 8 ink system; cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, light magenta and three different blacks – photo black, matte black, light black, and light light black. This adds up to nine inks, not eight. The reason is that either glossy (photo) black or matte black can be used at any one time. And therein lies a tale, which we’ll get to shortly.

A Short Digression

At the risk of boring some readers I’d like to comment on how Epson got itself into the pickle of needing to switch inks on the 4800 (and the 7800 and 9800 printers, for that matter).

The 4800’s predecessor, the 4000, was only on the market for a brief time, but it captured many photographers’ interest. It had eight ink slots, used pigment inks, and had three different blacks, all of which were housed at the same time. But, glossy prints suffered from bronzing. This was largely solved with K3 inks, but this needed the new 4800 model to use them. When the 4800 came out, it used the same 8 ink chassis, except that Epson dropped the ability to house both glossy and matte black ink at the same time, and added a Light / Light black instead.

The good news was the addition of this third black ink effectively eliminated bronzing (along with reformulated colour inks), and also increased the printer’s ability to produce very neutral B&W prints. The bad news was that now it was necessary to swap black ink cartridges every time paper types were changed between matte and glossy. This is both expensive (about $75 each time ($150 round trip)) and time consuming.

As we’ll now see, Canon has directly targeted this weak-spot in the Epson 4800’s nature.

Epson deserves credit for almost single handedly moving desktop fine art printing for photographers from hobbyist toy to professional tool. Yes, HP and Canon have had some decent printers, but in this market segment none used pigment-based inks. HP has been able to develop long lasting dye-based inks, (but only when used with their proprietary glossy and luster finish swellable media papers), and has not had anything like the market penetration of Epson among fine art photographers.

In the Epson line the Pro 4800 model has been one of the most popular among photographers. The larger 7800 and 9800 models are floor-standing rather than desktop, and larger than most people have room for at home or in a small studio. The 4800 can print up to 17″ wide by almost any length, on sheet paper or rolls, and this meets the needs of most photographers. While the K3 pigment inks are also available in the smaller Epson 2400 model, for anyone doing any serious volume of printing the dramatically higher ink costs with the 2400, due to the use of very small cartridges, means that the 4800 model, though it costs more initially, is actually a better value long term.

It’s also worth noting that printers larger than these 17″ models do not have sheet fed paper trays, and therefore are less practical when sheet paper is predominantly used.

Canon, being the 800 pound gorilla of the photographic industry, seems to have now made a corporate commitment not to allow Epson’s virtual monopoly on professional wide carriage photographic printers to go unchallenged. With the 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer they have taken aim squarely at the Epson 4800, accurately targeting all of that printer’s flaws, and in some ways surpassing its well recognized first-rate image quality.

To produce a brand new high-end printer is no small feat, even for a company as large as Canon. It requires the design of news heads, and especially a family of new inks. The level of precision of manufacturing is also exceptionally high. Though it looks straightforward when standing in front of the machine as it chums out prints, the technology going on behind the scenes is considerable.

Specs and Features

Though they are available in detail on the Canon web site, let’s look at some of the printer’s most salient features and specifications so as to properly set the stage.

This printer is big. Really big. And heavy. Some 90 pounds in fact. And it comes delivered in a huge carton that is attached to a wooden palette. If you’re going to pick this up from your dealer, bring a friend (maybe two), and make sure that the dealer removes it from the palette first, or you’ll need a forklift. Bring a minivan or pick-up truck. Better yet, just have it delivered!

Canon iPF 5000 in background

with Epson 4800 in foreground, and Epson 2200 to the side Set-up is straightforward once you have a large enough surface prepared. There are two connections possible to your computer, either USB-2 or Ethernet. The printer comes with a built in Ethernet card, but there is no Firewire. There is a card slot for an optional Firewire board. Interestingly, Epson provides Firewire along with USB-2, and charges extra for Ethernet. Frankly, I think Canon’s approach makes more sense, since the advantage of having LAN connectivity outweighs having two forms of otherwise essentially interchangeable high speed serial connections. (A LAN connection is very handy when more than a single computer is serving one printer).

Driver software is provided for both Windows XP and Mac OS X and, curiously, OS 9. (Don’t tell anyone in Japan that OS 9 was discontinued several years ago. Or at least that there are only a few dozen people left in the world using it).

Installation is straightforward. There are some additional programs provided, but all except one, the 12 bit plug-in, will not be discussed here. More on the plug-in shortly.

The 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer carries a suggested retail price in the US of $1,995, with the roll paper adaptor costing an extra $250.

Paper Handling

Paper handling is versatile, There is a front loading paper holder that can manage stacks of paper from 8X10″ to 17X22″. Very heavy paper may also be fed singly from the front, and regular paper singly from the top, as well as from the optional 17″ roll paper holder. Annoyingly, the printer won’t let you load thinner papers from the front position.

The cassette paper holder is versatile, but unlike the Epson’s tray holder, which is unaware of what size paper is loaded until one attempts to make a print, whenever the cassette tray on the 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer is placed into the machine the front panel LCD insists that you tell it the type of paper and the size that has been loaded. This wouldn’t be a bad thing, since it’s quite easy to do, except that you also need to tell this to the printer driver. More on this issue shortly.

Inks

Inks come in 130 ML cartridges (each slightly larger than the Epson 4800’s 110ML cartridges). There are 12 of them; cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, light magenta, red, blue, green, glossy black, matte black, light black and light / light black. These are pigment inks, and are named Lucia, by Canon. Lucia meaning light, in Latin.

These are all found in a doored compartment on the left front side of the printer. The set of inks that come with the printer are partial, used for priming the ink lines and getting you started. Even then, they appear to last for quite a while, though I don’t have enough mileage yet to know first hand what eventual ink costs will be on a per-print basis. Mark Segal, who wrote the definitive Tracking the Cost of Printing with an Epson 4000 (and later the 4800) is buying an 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer, and so once he has some data accumulated we can expect to know the answer to this.

Inks cost US $75 a cartridge (MSRP). OK. Get out your calculator. (12 X 75 = $900). Yes, close to a thousand dollars for a complete set of inks, when local sales taxes are included.

Update: The figures below have been updated based on revised usage data. The original data published here within the first few hours was incorrect. I apologize for the error.

But, this needs to be seen in the proper context. Using figures for the large format W series Canon printers and luster type glossy paper, estimated ink costs work out to 37 cents US for a A3 sized print and 48 cents for an 11X17. This means that the the 1.56 liters of ink contained in the twelve 130ml cartridges in the printer would be able to produce some 2,500 A3 sized prints. So, assuming (as I do) production of about 100 such prints a month, that’s over two years years of printing on a set of cartridges.

Of course this isn’t the way it’s actually going to work, because some carts run out before others (the light magenta and yellows, for example) while other factors such as the subject matter printed will also play a role. Given all of this math (much of which can be quibbled over), I think it’s safe to say that buying ink cartridges is not going to be a major financial consideration for anyone that can afford to buy the printer in the first place. And for anyone doing so much printing that ink costs are a consideration, one would hope that revenue from the sale of prints made would be more than adequate to compensate.

Initial Ink Supply

As soon as the printer first appeared there was quite a bit of sillyness bandied about on some web sites and forums regarding the small initial ink set. Canon provides cartridges with the printer that have about half the usual amount of ink. This then drops by 20% when the printer is first activated. But these inks aren’t wasted, they simply are filling up the ink lines and will be available to be used eventually. The purchaser is still getting about $500 worth of ink with this $2,000 printer. And, even though I have made several dozen large prints over a three week period, both testing the printer and for some commercial clients, I have yet to see the ink levels drop appreciably.

Ink levels with starter cartridges after making several dozen 11X17″ and 13X19″ prints

It’s important to note that all 12 cartridges are present at all times. This means that one can switch from printing on matte paper to glossy paper without changing black ink cartridges. Compared to the Epson 4800, this a big deal. The 4800 is a highly frustrating machine for this reason. Every time one changes black inks approximately $75 worth of ink is wasted, not to mention the 15 minutes of standing in front of the machine flipping levers that’s required.

The Imageprint Phatte Black system is one solution when using the 4800, and if you need and use a RIP, a good one. But otherwise it is an expensive solution to an otherwise real and vexing problem. I believe that for many photographers whose clients require a mix of print types, the cost and hassle saving of not having to switch inks could alone be worth the trade-in losses of switching from a Epson 4800 to an iPF 5000.

One advantage that the Epson 4800 does have is that it can also take the larger 220ml cartridges, which means less attention needs to be paid to ink swapping, likely leading to lower ink costs.

Head Cleaning

Apparently the iPF 5000 knows when its heads needs cleaning, and does so itself. In fact, sometimes while it’s just sitting there idling the printer spontaneously decides to run a cleaning cycle, seemingly for no apparent reason. But there is a reason, and it is based on a series of factors including total time on, time idle, time sleeping, time with heads capped, time spent printing, or not printing. Based on an equation that takes all of these timing factors into account, the printer may decide to run one of a number of different cleaning cycles. The most common of these apparently uses only a very tiny amount of ink. In the order of picoliters.

There is the ability to manually run a cleaning cycle from the printer’s front panel, or from its utility software. But, I am told that the need to do this is very unlikely. The reason being that the design of the 11X17 Color Inkjet Printer is such that it constantly sense all 30,720 individual nozzles, and is able to know when a cleaning cycle is needed. Or, if needs be, the printer can bypass a clogged nozzle in the middle of making a print.

Canon’s technical papers indicate that head clogging is extremely rare due to their using bubble jet technology. Though the number isn’t official, I am told that less than 10% of total ink usage will be attributable to head cleaning. Epson ink usage and head cleaning, will be reporting in a forthcoming Up-Date on Epson 4800 printing costs, that the percentage of total ink used for cleaning ranges considerably up-ward of 17%, depending on machine usage