Taking photos is only one part of the picture, and while printing feels like a bit of a bygone, it can come back with printing, something Canon’s latest printer could just help with.
We live in a world where cameras can be found pretty much anywhere and everywhere, but printers markedly less so. Your phone is likely the main camera you use on a regular basis, but whether you send the images to the printed page or the wall, that’s probably less likely than used to be the case.
These days, we send our images to the online worlds we occupy, be it social media or backup to the cloud, or even both.
Printing is a little passé, but if you really value an image, printing definitely holds a place in our hearts, particularly if you plan on mounting and framing, later.
If you end up taking this course, you’re typically looking at a different style of printer than your standard multifunction, with something that can deal in big and heavy paper types, and with better quality inks that hold their life better. These can vary from company to company, and at different price points, but a new model from Canon aims to keep pros and purists happy, with a focus on big paper sizes and pigment inks that provide stronger colour range across both monochrome and colour prints.
It’s coming in Canon’s ImagePrograf Pro-300, a printer that can print up to an A3+ paper size, and supports ten inks, including a “Chrome Optimiser” that uses a clear ink to reduce irregularities found between different paper types. There are even two blacks, providing a photo black and matte black to make the blacks just that much deeper, working with a Canon image processor to work out where to lay the various inks for improved results.
Canon’s ImagePrograf Pro-300 doesn’t use a continuous ink system, though, so if you end up running out of one of the ten inks, you’ll have to replace the ink cartridge for each of the ten as and when you need to. However the printer does have some neat features rolled in, such as skew correction to account for paper going into the printer at an angle, and checks to make sure the ink nozzles are working properly.
There’s also support for both WiFi and Ethernet on the printer, plus USB if you have to connect using the old school way, and it’s one that aims to let you print images directly from RAW photos on select cameras, though we won’t be surprised if most of those are made by Canon.
Canon’s Prograf Pro-300 isn’t expected until August 2020, and while Canon allows dealers to set their own pricing and doesn’t provide recommended retail prices, the general feeling is that this one should be found for around $1100 when it does release in Australia next month.
