Canon ChromaLife100 System Introduced

#1 Jeff

Come on Canon! 30 years light fast under glass, that's no better than traditional chemical prints. And ONLY 10 years gas fade resistance! You've got to be kidding!! Canon, you must do better than that. Epson has blown you doors off and all you can rebut with is this?? There is no way I could consider using this system for serious professional photography work. I could not sell a print to a customer knowing it may fade from esposure to air in as little as ten years.

7:31 pm - Monday, July 25, 2005

#2 Victor

A Comment to JEFF:
Why you forgot to mention when you talk about Epson is that YOU must be referring to the printers that Epson sells that reflect their PIGMENT based ink sets. ANYTHING printer below their $349 model R800, is ALSO DYE-based ink. NO ONE else in the market has tested or published their color lightfastness rated by conditions of photos just laying around without ANY protection, just like being tacked up on the refridgerator. 100 years in a photo album, and even higher than 30+ years can be achieved in a frame depending on "how" you frame your picture. There have been articles recently in the media as to "how long is enough"? Most people I talk to in 90% of all of the retail stores I have worked at (which is all of them), say that they won't be alive in 30-100 years, so at that point, being in the "digital" age, it's MORE important to today's photographer to preserve the digital "FILE" itself, be it on cd-rom, dvd and so on. Then 100 plus years down the road, or heck, even 30, my son or his grandson can reprint the photo with probably better quality that ANYthing available today by ANYONE. Considering Canon lays down the smallest droplet of ink now, 1 picolitre at 9600x2400 dpi, and producing the HIGHEST color gamut with their dye based inks in the industry, these qualities far outweigh color light fastness issues. For the real professional, GO ahead and buy Canon's ImageProGraff W6400 or 8400 PIGMENT based wide/large format printer and stop griping about a few years.

9:08 pm - Friday, August 5, 2005

#3 Jeff

I think you missed the point of my statement. I'm referring to prints made for sale as professional photographs to paying customers, not snapshots of my kids at the zoo. I don't really care what the chemistry of the ink set is as long as I can get the print longevity I'm looking for. The print longevity of Canon's new ink set falls significantly short of what Epson offers and does not even match that of chemical prints. My issue is that Canon has not been able to come up with a system that is in the same league as what Epson has been offering for several years.

Your argument, which I have heard time and time again on message boards and even in magazine articles, that you can simply re-print the photo when it fades, is laughable. This is a completely unacceptable solution in my opinion, even for personal photos. Can you imagine having to reprint all of your personal photos every 6 months to 2 years, as would be the case with many dye ink solutions presently sold, because they have faded from exposure to air/ozone? I can’t, and won’t.

If I'm selling a fine art photograph to someone for $100's or $1000's of dollars, I and they should expect a significant life span, at least as long as traditional chemical prints, and likely longer. Not all images are displayed under museum conditions. I would also like to be able to print on canvas that is not intended to be displayed behind glass and expect a reasonable lifespan from the image. Another example is wedding photographs. I'd be willing to bet that most people paying $1000's of dollars for professional wedding photographs would expect their prints to last more than 10 to 30 years! I guarantee you that not everyone stores their prints in archival albums and boxes. In the past is was not uncommon for B&W wedding photos to last a couple of generations, even 60 or 100 years before significant degradation. I believe that most people have come to expect this kind of longevity for these types of prints.

What Canon is offering as their 'professional' solution is not adequate in my opinion.

10:17 pm - Friday, August 5, 2005

#4 Victor

You ask of a professional solution, but must have missed it when I mentioned the ImagePrograff W6400 and W8400. Here is the website, they are PIGMENT based professional Canon wide/large format printers and will print on rolls up to 44" long. These machines range up from $3495 and $6000 respectively.
W6400: http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=170&modelid=11264
W8400: http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=170&modelid=11258
Is these two models are NOT professional in your opinion, I'm not sure what is. I co-own a camera shop and can tell you what inventory goes the most as far as digital cameras and printers and I compare my sales with that of Ritz and Wolf camera. I suppose you're going to say that the EOS Digital SLR's from Canon aren't good either? LOL Like the Mark II and the 20D? Anways, you mention having to reprint a photo from Canon is 6 months to two years, but that's not the rating from Canon NOR Wilhelm Research (the independant testing company). So you're saying 30-40 years is NOT long enough, even when selling a photo? I wasn't necessarily talking about snap shots of the kids at the zoo either. Both Epson and Canon have professional printers in the thousands of dollars that fair against each other just the same. You may attend one of the PMA shows in Vegas or Stockholm, Germany the next time these shows come around. Canon has been leading in market for 5-6 years now and is gaining on Epson in many areas. The Canon i9900 8 color photo printer even rated higher in overall color gamut in a test against Epson's new K3 inks. No one is without their flaws. Did you know Epson's "gloss optimizer" exists because their pigment ink doesn't evenly lay down on photo paper? Their prints still suffer from the "bronzing" effect as well and do you want the number of their printers that have come back to my repair shot because their print heads are clogged?? At least with Canon, the head can be removed seperately, and successfully clean with minimum effort. I'm not saying that Epson doesn't make a good photo, they do, but technology wise, aside from longevity, Canon produces a superiour picture overall (1 picolitre droplet and now 9600x2400 dpi). Canon hasn't gone the route with pigment based printers for their consumer line becuase of the stigma that Epson gets with heads clogging (this is inherent to pigment based ink), bronzing and having to use some sort of fix (gloss optimizer), is order to make solid shades and color transitions smooth. Not to mention, you don't know HOW many people complain about that darn "chip" on the Epson cartridge. At the shop, we have taken a set of Epson cartridges, after the machine says it's out and broken open, only to find out they still have almost 30% of ink still in the cartridge. Epson was sued recentlty in two states, even got up to "class action" status at one point. I'm just saying that if you have never seen the prints from the W6400 or 8400, then please check out the Canon website and visit a dealer where these are sold. We have one of each at my shopt and so I just qualify a customer into what they want and how much they want to spend.

1:42 am - Saturday, August 6, 2005