Canon S900 review

Vincent Oliver March 2002

In the photographic industry Canon enjoys a reputation second to none - their film, cameras and lenses are amongst, if not the finest, money can buy. Canon have not stood still with digital photography, they make an excellent range of digital cameras for both the professional and amateur market. Digital photography is more than just taking pictures, it gives the end user the facility to manipulate, retouch and print their work. To this end Canon, in addition to their scanners and business printers, also produce a range of photographic specific printers.

The new chip on the desk is the stylish silver coloured Canon S900 A4 printer. The S900 photo printer follows in the footsteps of its predecessor the S800 with a resolution of 2400x1200dpi but prints twice as fast and up to three times faster than its nearest competitor. This high speed is achieved by a new larger print head which has 3072 nozzles delivering 73.7 million droplets of ink per second (I wonder who had the job of counting them). The S900 uses 6 individual colour ink tanks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Light Cyan, Light Magenta and Black) and you need only replace the colour that has run out, which is a less wasteful way of working. Although at £10.56 each tank (£63.36 for the set), they are more expensive than combined ink tank cartridges, in the long term you should be saving money. The S900 connects to either a Mac or Windows computer via a USB port; drivers are included for both OSs.

Setting up the printer is straightforward, a printed Quick Start manual takes you through each stage, from taking off the seemingly endless packaging tape and protection caps to creating your first print. A more detailed manual is included in Adobe PDF format included on the installation CD. The print head has to be fitted by the user into the print head holder (a simple process), which would indicate you can easily replace the print head at a later date should you need to. Not so, according to Canon who states that if there is a problem with the head then the printer would have to be serviced by an authorised dealer.  The print head is not sold separately, but is expected to last the life of the printer. The six ink tanks fit in the colour coded print head cradle - it is important they are fitted in the correct order otherwise you will get some weird looking colour prints.

Before using the printer for the first time you must align the print head which is a once only process (unless alignment problems arise). The Head Alignment utility is found in the printer’s properties dialogue panel under the Maintenance tab, together with a host of other utilities such as Clean, Nozzle check, Power settings and Quiet Mode.

Paper is gravity fed from the rear - the norm for most inkjet printers. Problems can arise through multiple sheets dropping down and causing paper jams especially with lighter weight papers, although this didn’t happen on the review printer during our test period. The advantage of gravity feed is that the paper can have a relatively straight paper path (as opposed to going through a U bend), enabling you to use a heavier weight paper. Having said that, the S900 will only accommodate paper weights of 64 to 105 gm or Canon’s own 245 gm Photo Quality paper. Canon’s previous model, the S800, had a straight paper path option which meant heavier paper or card could be used. This feature has been left out on the S900. In theory, other manufacturers’ papers can be used as long as they don’t exceed the maximum 245 gm paper weight.

The print dialogue box is relatively simple to follow, you set the Media Type, the quality and Colour Adjustment via the Main tab. The paper size, orientation and number of copies are set via the Page Setup tab.  Custom settings can be saved using the Profiles tab and applied to other pictures at a later date. All the controls are well laid out and easy to follow, perhaps not offering enough options for the more advanced user.

The results…

The quality of prints produced by the S900 are truly amazing, the print dots are so small that you can’t see them with the naked eye and are hard to see using a high quality loupe. This is mainly due to Canon’s MicroFine Droplet Technology, which lays down 4pl. microscopic drops of ink. The small ink dots on a 10 x 8 print are smaller than film grain on an equivalent photographic print. This produces a print with an ultra smooth photographic quality.

Colours are vibrant, although the blacks lack that extra bit of punch (however, this can be tweaked via the Colour Adjustments settings and increasing the value in the black ink slider). Having said this, the black areas did retain a high degree of detail without the image blocking up. Although prints are dry to touch when they exit the printer, they should be left for at least 15 minutes before being judged for critical colour accuracy. This allows the colours to settle, the blacks to deepen, and other colours to develop a richer quality when dry.

Using the printer in auto mode produced prints which were a little on the bright side, you can tweak this by setting the Colour Adjustments to manual mode and tweaking the various sliders to your preferred taste. However, turning on the ICM in the manual settings allows the printer to use the sRGB Windows colour space and produced a print which was faithful to the image on screen.  (ICM only operates under Windows XP & 2000). For the advanced user, the Printer Colour Management can be turned off and custom profiles can be used for other manufacturers’ paper stock, such as Watercolour papers etc. However, a separate colour profiling application such as Monaco EZ Color, would be required.

Print speeds are outstanding - a full coverage A4 sheet at the highest quality setting took just 90 seconds (timed from clicking the OK button to final delivery). The printer has a Quiet Mode setting which cuts down the printer noise considerably and can be programmed to turn on at a given time (a useful feature for those who live in a flat and like to print at 3 am). The S900 can produce borderless prints. To do this, you must select the Borderless printing option in the Page setup tab, the picture dimensions are automatically increased to slightly larger than the paper area, a small amount of quality loss may occur. The overspill of ink is absorbed by sponges on either side of the print head so no worries of a messy printer interior here.

For the Monochrome  (Black & White enthusiast), the Canon has a Greyscale Printing setting. Greyscale prints are neutral in colour without any hint of colour, for my taste I found these to be too cold and prefer a slightly warmer tone. To do this, convert the image to RGB in Photoshop (or other imaging application), and apply a slight hue etc., then print the image as a colour picture. There is a Monochrome effects setting in the print control panel which lets you apply an overall monochrome colour to the image – the effects are basic and best forgotten about.

The S900 produced good plain paper text documents with well defined characters giving near laser printer quality - again the blacks are on the weak side looking more like a 85% grey. The S900 could be an expensive workhorse if you are thinking of using it for all your printing tasks, perhaps it would be more economical to have a separate printer for run of the mill work.

Canon produce a limited range of photo papers from a rather flimsy High Resolution Paper (106 gm), to their excellent Photo Paper Pro (245 gm), together with Photo cards, T-Shirt transfers, Banner paper etc. The highly glossy PPP paper shows off the S900 printer’s capabilities to its best. This combination produces pictures that are indistinguishable from conventionally printed photographs.

Having spent many fruitless hours (years) in a damp darkroom trying to get the perfect colour print and not always being totally happy with the results. I have finally seen the light with the aid of the S900 printer and have decided now is the time to sell my darkroom gear.

Verdict.

The Canon S900 is a well designed and well constructed hardware item that’s easy to use and delivers outstanding results. The S900 wouldn't look out of place in the home, studio, or office, and gets our thumbs up as being the best photographic printer available today.

Pros:
Excellent photographic print quality
Fast printing speeds
Separate ink tanks

Cons:
Expensive inks
Limited range of papers
Cost: £329 (inc. vat)

www.canon.co.uk 

©Vincent Oliver 2002