CANON IP250...a filmy look???

[jessarooy2k]

Greetings fellow ink mind bending, overachieving, underachieving, equalizing, heroes of the forum. I have need again of your expertise. Especially before I send this little printer packing. The Canon ip250 has some extraordinary good factors for a $40 (US) printer ; the scanning ability is quite good, and text printing is second to none in my humble opinion. But the photo printing ability, be it Canon paper or any other, just plain sucks. I say that only by comparison to another printer in my now growing print shop. But by that very comparison (and having tried every conceivable profile in my arsenal, which certainly isn't outlandish) I am stumped. I have a 5 year old little HP printer that beats it up using the standard SRGB as apposed to the Adobe RGB color gamut. Both printers use a chipped black and color inkjet cartridge. But putting printed images side by side from the same file on the same matte paper (or gloss, makes no difference) there's this sorta filmy haze from the Canon. Is there some sort of secret I'm not using? Is it Canon's Software? Drivers? I've even by-passed Canon's color control in Adobe Elements to no avail. Certainly, without comparing apples to apples the Canon's print would easily suffice for most folks. But I have been bitten by the perfection
wielding nightmare god of printerdom. Tell me, is it just me or do you guys sometimes do sword & shield battle in your dreams at nite with printers, CISS's, & Photo paper arch enemies? lol. I really would like to, at least, give it away to someone without feeling I've just unloaded a burdensome ink guzzler (and it is, trust me). Surely, there must be a way to refill these buggars too.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Jesse G.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Tell me, is it just me or do you guys sometimes do sword & shield battle in your dreams at nite with printers, CISS's, & Photo paper arch enemies?

No, I never had those kinds of dreams.

I believe the cartridges in this printer have more than just a chip in them, I believe they have the entire print head in them. If you really want to learn what is causing the "filmy look", just buy another color cartridge and that should solve the problem.

However, I would not wish any printer on anyone that uses cartridges with built-in print heads. Not only are the cartridges very expensive (doesn't matter which brand), since the color cartridges have three colors in them, you have to replace (or refill) whenever any one color runs out. In my experience, it is very difficult to refill because if you overfill one color, it will contaminate the other colors and since the cartridges are not transparent, you can never tell when that will happen.

I recommend that you use this printer to get $50 off the price of a new printer from Staples or just recycle it. Please don't sell it or give it away unless you really want to give someone else a "sword & shield battle" nightmare.

 

[jessarooy2k]

ghwellsjr

Of course you know that Canon is selling this printer in just about every Wally World and office store in the world right now...and that inkjets are the norm for most folks. Surprisingly, few people even know of this forum. Still, to make $10 off a printer that I've owned for less than 2 months is news to me, especially if I can get one of those Epson "jewels" mikling spoke of in one of his latest posts. I owe you my thanks for the "heads up" about OfficeMax $50 recycle offer. Sounds like the best route to & for me.

Thanks <)

 

[qwertydude]

Well I can tell you the reason that the cheap canon looks kinda weird is it doesn't have a real photo black ink. It makes photo black by mixing all the colors. My gf has one of the tri-color Canon's and picture quality is meh even with a custom color profile from profile prism it just cannot print with as bold a color as a real canon 5 or 6 color printer. And it's not only that the canon guzzles ink it also comes with tiny cartridges, it's how they're able to sell you a $40 all in one. My IP4600 on the other hand, combined with my canon lide 200 scanner is pretty much a perfect printer-scanner combination, plus if one craps out I don't have to throw away everything.

 

[ghwellsjr]

I owe you my thanks for the "heads up" about OfficeMax $50 recycle offer. Sounds like the best route to & for me.

Maybe OfficeMax is offering $50 off when you buy a printer (I think it has to be at least $200) but I mentioned Staples as the place that I'm aware of that is doing this right now. Staples also will give you $3 credit per cartridge that you recycle with them (up to ten per month) so if you take a printer in there, make sure you remove the cartridges and get even more credit. Unfortunately, you can't spend it all at the same time, you have to wait about a month.