[dstar]

I use the canon 6820. I think it is one of the least expensive 13x19 printers. I received it the end of May. I 13x19 in a 18x24 frame looks pretty good on a lot of walls. I also started to cut my own mats. My plan is to rotate photos

Agree working house printer
I use even none canon ink from Amazon very cheap and actually stable result
Last year upgrade to 8720 very happy

[eric1965]

Coming from a dark room, I invested into a decent inktjet printer, If you invest into expensive camera equipment just for posting on Instagram, FB, what's the point.
I am perhaps old school but I print my work regularly and can go up to 17" wide, with for me is more than large enough for my needs.

[reh321]

Coming from a dark room, I invested into a decent inktjet printer, If you invest into expensive camera equipment just for posting on Instagram, FB, what's the point.
I am perhaps old school but I print my work regularly and can go up to 17" wide, with for me is more than large enough for my needs.

Using film, I used slide film for projection on a screen.

Now, I produce JPEGs for display on a screen.
Conceptually the same idea.

[robbiec]

I have a Canon Pro 10 - every now and again I get a shot I like and I print it off in A3+

[Viking42]

Quick question to those who own Canon printers: how long does the ink last in the printer before it goes off? I was once told by a salesperson that inks in such printers last only a certain time before they are no good anymore and need replacing, but then we were discussing Epson models. At several hundred dollars a set, that was deal breaker for me. I have never been able to find reliable information on this for Canon printers, however. Any insight from actual owners would be helpful, as the thought of having a printer on hand is certainly quite appealing.

[robbiec]

You really need to be churning out a print at least once a week. Leave it longer than say a month and it'll go through a cleaning process that will drink the ink. I've never had an ink go off as it were but I've wasted ink cleaning.

[biz-engineer]

You really need to be churning out a print at least once a week. Leave it longer than say a month and it'll go through a cleaning process that will drink the ink. I've never had an ink go off as it were but I've wasted ink cleaning.

If I understood correctly (Canon pro line inkjet printers), the printer periodically purges the print heads to prevent ink drying in those tiny nozzles. The amount of ink, intensity of the purge, depends on the amount of time since the print heads were last used. Ink has to flow thru the nozzle on a regular basis. Ink costs approximately $1 per ml (milliliter), which either goes on paper (~1ml per A4 area) or in the waste ink tanks. Inkjet printers are great for use by print labs (printing often) where much more ink goes on paper or canvas than the amount of ink that is wasted for cleaning purpose.

[Viking42]

You really need to be churning out a print at least once a week. Leave it longer than say a month and it'll go through a cleaning process that will drink the ink. I've never had an ink go off as it were but I've wasted ink cleaning.

Thanks for the insight - I would maybe do a couple of prints every few months, so it sounds like the economy of using all that ink just for cleaning is really not on my side here. So even if the ink doesn't "go off", as you say, most of it would probably go just to cleaning, which is so wasteful.

If I understood correctly (Canon pro line inkjet printers), the printer periodically purges the print heads to prevent ink drying in those tiny nozzles. The amount of ink, intensity of the purge, depends on the amount of time since the print heads were last used. Ink has to flow thru the nozzle on a regular basis. Ink costs approximately $1 per ml (milliliter), which either goes on paper (~1ml per A4 area) or in the waste ink tanks. Inkjet printers are great for use by print labs (printing often) where much more ink goes on paper or canvas than the amount of ink that is wasted for cleaning purpose.

Yeah, the ink is certainly very costly. I had hoped that maybe Canon had technology that was more economical, less wasteful, but this is just not for me. As much as I'd love to have a printer to use whenever I had the urge, it looks like I will continue to use my local fine art shop for this. They do great work, and I spend a couple of hundred dollars there per year - less than the ink and paper would cost me for running a home printer.

Appreciate the feedback - thanks!

I had an HP color inkjet printer back when - the nozzles clogged up if you looked at it funny, though all I had to do was wash the cartridge under hot water for a minute to clear it up. Too much trouble, threw it out.
Later, I got a Xerox color laser printer, and I still use that, but it's really only good for, say, documenting your bhphoto purchase so you can tell 'em what was wrong when they screw up. Printing pictures is, well, you can tell it's supposed to be a picture of something...
So, about a year ago, I bought a Canon Imagegraf Pro 1000 - I think that's what it's called. I've had a number of "adventures" during that time (wife broke her hip, car problems, house problems - all those little "gotchas" that take too much time). Nevertheless, given my infrequent visits to my "office" to print stuff, and even more infrequent "nozzle checks", the thing performs beautifully, no clogging at all. I think it's a terrific printer.
The people who seem to know the most about this stuff and who are really picky about their fine art prints because they sell 'em, say that the "lab" is too much trouble - people at the "lab" edit their prints in funny ways, do color-conversions improperly, don't get stuff lined up on the paper right, etc., etc. One guy said he always had to keep sending stuff back, often multiple times, before they'd get it right. Well, I'm pretty picky myself, so I went and got my own printer. I can see as how other folks don't need things as precisely accurate as I do, and just want to print their family photos and snapshots, and don't need that kind of horsepower.
One caveat, though, learning to work a serious printer is like learning to use a computer. It is just another computer, after all, but it's not just care and feeding of the machine, it's knowing about all the kinds of paper out there, how to work the software you need to be able to format the print correctly, which I find is different from editing software. Different software packages have different strengths, and none is good at everything, so I use one package for raw editing, a different one for JPEG's, and another for printing layout. Lots of stuff to remember. And then there's the quirks - everything humans do is quirky, just in different ways, and all these multiple components of the process have their quirks, too, from the operating system in the computer to the characteristics of a particular kind of paper.

Simplify your life, use a lab.
Get perfect prints, buy a printer.

[UncleVanya]

Quick question to those who own Canon printers: how long does the ink last in the printer before it goes off? I was once told by a salesperson that inks in such printers last only a certain time before they are no good anymore and need replacing, but then we were discussing Epson models. At several hundred dollars a set, that was deal breaker for me. I have never been able to find reliable information on this for Canon printers, however. Any insight from actual owners would be helpful, as the thought of having a printer on hand is certainly quite appealing.

Precision colors makes very good replacement ink sets for many canon printers:

Precision Colors Home Page

[Viking42]

I had an HP color inkjet printer back when - the nozzles clogged up if you looked at it funny, though all I had to do was wash the cartridge under hot water for a minute to clear it up. Too much trouble, threw it out.
Later, I got a Xerox color laser printer, and I still use that, but it's really only good for, say, documenting your bhphoto purchase so you can tell 'em what was wrong when they screw up. Printing pictures is, well, you can tell it's supposed to be a picture of something...
So, about a year ago, I bought a Canon Imagegraf Pro 1000 - I think that's what it's called. I've had a number of "adventures" during that time (wife broke her hip, car problems, house problems - all those little "gotchas" that take too much time). Nevertheless, given my infrequent visits to my "office" to print stuff, and even more infrequent "nozzle checks", the thing performs beautifully, no clogging at all. I think it's a terrific printer.
The people who seem to know the most about this stuff and who are really picky about their fine art prints because they sell 'em, say that the "lab" is too much trouble - people at the "lab" edit their prints in funny ways, do color-conversions improperly, don't get stuff lined up on the paper right, etc., etc. One guy said he always had to keep sending stuff back, often multiple times, before they'd get it right. Well, I'm pretty picky myself, so I went and got my own printer. I can see as how other folks don't need things as precisely accurate as I do, and just want to print their family photos and snapshots, and don't need that kind of horsepower.
One caveat, though, learning to work a serious printer is like learning to use a computer. It is just another computer, after all, but it's not just care and feeding of the machine, it's knowing about all the kinds of paper out there, how to work the software you need to be able to format the print correctly, which I find is different from editing software. Different software packages have different strengths, and none is good at everything, so I use one package for raw editing, a different one for JPEG's, and another for printing layout. Lots of stuff to remember. And then there's the quirks - everything humans do is quirky, just in different ways, and all these multiple components of the process have their quirks, too, from the operating system in the computer to the characteristics of a particular kind of paper.

Simplify your life, use a lab.
Get perfect prints, buy a printer.

I guess I've been lucky with the labs that do my printing - I've only had a couple of duds, and the rest were stellar. The trick to getting good results was to get my monitor dialed to their output, so that what I see on my screen is a close facsimile of the finished print. My local one (within walking distance) is a husband and wife shop - the wife does all the printing and lets me look at her monitor before she clicks "print" so I can proof and make a little tweak if needed. Never had a bad print from them. The other one I use is an online service that does occasional giclee B&W prints and photo books for me, and that one took a few tries to get my side all set. But now that my monitor is adjusted I'm getting consistently great prints.

Good to know, however, that you're happy with your Canon. How long have you had ink sitting in there before you had to replace it? Just due to age, that is. Has that ever been a factor?

Precision colors makes very good replacement ink sets for many canon printers:

Precision Colors Home Page

Thanks! I will check them out. Would be good if their prices were better than the OEM inks, because those are darn costly.

[biz-engineer]

The people who seem to know the most about this stuff and who are really picky about their fine art prints because they sell 'em, say that the "lab" is too much trouble - people at the "lab" edit their prints in funny ways, do color-conversions improperly, don't get stuff lined up on the paper right, etc., etc. One guy said he always had to keep sending stuff back, often multiple times, before they'd get it right.

Well, over a hundred prints ordered to labs, one (large, expensive) print really screwed up on color management and they never dare to check what happened. A few other prints not great due to OoG color not translated correctly on the prints, but I could have expected that. It's not bad. The advantage of having the printer is that you can crop a sample of an image, apply different image processing settings and print the tile (contact sheet layout) on paper to see immediately what setting renders the best relative to others under the same light (same viewer), and then print the whole image with the best setting on a large format sheet. Such hard proofing can also be done with labs, but it's more costly (shipment costs) and slow, or less costly (sending hard proof / test prints together with other prints) but then it's even slower. Basically, owning the printer costs more, but that's the price to pay for having full control over the print process and output quality.

...
Good to know, however, that you're happy with your Canon. How long have you had ink sitting in there before you had to replace it? Just due to age, that is. Has that ever been a factor?

...

I've run a few of them dry, using them up, but I've never had a problem with clogging or anything else - it's been about a year since I got it, I reckon.

Well, over a hundred prints ordered to labs, one (large, expensive) print really screwed up on color management and they never dare to check what happened. A few other prints not great due to OoG color not translated correctly on the prints, but I could have expected that. It's not bad. The advantage of having the printer is that you can crop a sample of an image, apply different image processing settings and print the tile (contact sheet layout) on paper to see immediately what setting renders the best relative to others under the same light (same viewer), and then print the whole image with the best setting on a large format sheet. Such hard proofing can also be done with labs, but it's more costly (shipment costs) and slow, or less costly (sending hard proof / test prints together with other prints) but then it's even slower. Basically, owning the printer costs more, but that's the price to pay for having full control over the print process and output quality.

I think you're absolutely right, but "Results may vary..." - particularly for those internet/youtube people who expect all their results to be perfect.

Jose Rodriguez has a lot to say about all this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/user/cheo1949/videos.

Precision colors makes very good replacement ink sets for many canon printers:

Precision Colors Home Page

Rodriguez talks about them a lot, too.
Jose Rodriguez Photo Printing Techie - YouTube