Help needed deciding between Canon 9000 and 9500 MKII

[clive]

I need some advice before I purchase a new photo printer. I shall keep this post exclusive to the Canon 9000 MKII and 9500 MKII series. I am aware that the former uses dye and the latter pigment inks.

I currently have an HP designjet printer/plotter that uses pigment black and dye colours for cad plots. I have had zero problems with clogging over about 6 years using it every 2 3 months it just works when I turn it on. I now want to get into doing some reasonable size photos and will use it in a similar manner IE not regularly or even every week.

My specific questions are:

What is the black and white printing of the 9000 MKII and 9500 MKII like. I am aware that the 9000 MKII only has 1 black dye cartridge and the 9500 MKII has 3 black pigment cartridges..

The max paper length for both appears to be 676 mm or 26.6 from the driver can this be extended with a 3rd party program such as Qimage. I know they do not take roll holders but I assume I could feed in manually if the paper was flat.

The max width of paper seems to vary from 355.6mm for the 9000 MKII to 420mm for the 9500 MKII. If this is correct that means that the 9500 MKII could take A2 size cut sheets.. Again I assume this would need manually feeding in but would be nice if the paper feeder accepts this size. If they can take this larger than A3+ paper can they print borderlless at these widths and if not what would the margin be on the long sides.

How reliable is it to run either of these printers using 3rd party inks and/or refillable cartridges and does this affect the quality assuming I was using good quality paper.

Do either of these suffer from clogging and if so can the print heads be cleaned easily or replaced by me.


Thanks

 

[Lothman]

How reliable is it to run either of these printers using 3rd party inks and/or refillable cartridges and does this affect the quality assuming I was using good quality paper.

Have you found a source for pimented third party ink for the 9500? or refillable cartridges?
That's why I took an Epson A3 printer, much better avalaibility of third party stuff.

 

[tony22]

Clive, go here

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/printers_page.htm

and read the reviews of both printers. There are other reviews which can be found by searching the web, but this is a good place to start. You may not be aware of this, but the Pro9000 Mark II can be had for a really good price right now as people who had gotten them as part of a Canon camera / printer deal are looking to sell them off. That may be a factor if price is any consideration.

I have no experience with the 9500 but I just got the 9000. With respect to your questions, the one I can answer is that yes the head for both printers is removeable and can be cleaned. There is at least one thread about that here on the site.

 

[pharmacist]

No you cannot print A2 on the Pro9500, bear that in mind. It is still A3+ maximum.

Why not choosing the Epson 1400 ? It is considerably cheaper compared to the Pro 9000/Pro 9500 and it can handle pigment ink and the prints are very near to the Pro 9000 and installing a CISS system is possible with good reliability. The variable droplet technology guarantees a very wide gamut and produces very nice tonalities in the shadows. The Canon printers can only produce one droplet size per channel.

Another possibility is to use the UDPS-utility making it possible to print panorama's up to 6.5 metres. Canon printers are limited in length even with Qimage.

 

[clive]

No you cannot print A2 on the Pro9500, bear that in mind. It is still A3+ maximum.

Why not choosing the Epson 1400 ? It is considerably cheaper compared to the Pro 9000/Pro 9500 and it can handle pigment ink and the prints are very near to the Pro 9000 and installing a CISS system is possible with good reliability. The variable droplet technology guarantees a very wide gamut and produces very nice tonalities in the shadows. The Canon printers can only produce one droplet size per channel.

Another possibility is to use the UDPS-utility making it possible to print panorama's up to 6.5 metres. Canon printers are limited in length even with Qimage.

In the review located at
http://www.photoreview.com.au/Canon/reviews/printers/canon-pixma-pro9500-mark-ii.aspx
you will see they go into the size of paper and say "..However, like the Mark I, the Mark II has a Custom setting for paper sizes, although it's a little different from its predecessor, with a maximum size of 420 x 676 mm, compared with 431.8 x 558.8 mm for the previous model." and there is screen shot actually showing this. A2 is 420x594 so why would it not work?

I am not interested in an Epson as my previous experience with 2 of their models cost me a fortune to have the heads cleaned at the Epson service centre too often but more importantly they never worked reliably when I needed them due to the heads clogging.

What is the length limitation with Qimage for the Canon models. What is UDPS-utility.

The initial buying cost is less important than the thing working when I need it (and as someone once said to me you need to be a rich man to be able to afford a bargain). I can import a Pro900 for around A$500 which is about half the cost of the the 9000 as sold here - at least our dollar is going up

 

[The Hat]

clive

pharmacist wrote:
No you cannot print A2 on the Pro9500, bear that in mind. It is still A3+ maximum.

Pharmacist is correct on this one..


The max size on the 9500 mk2 is 356mm in width and not 420 as stated; its an error on Canons behalf or whoever wrote the article.
It will however print the length ok.

 

[clive]

clive

pharmacist wrote:
No you cannot print A2 on the Pro9500, bear that in mind. It is still A3+ maximum.

Pharmacist is correct on this one..


The max size on the 9500 mk2 is 356mm in width and not 420 as stated; its an error on Canons behalf or whoever wrote the article.
It will however print the length ok. :|

Thanks that clears that up and I assuming that it is therefore physically impossible to insert a 420 wide sheet of paper.

Could I ask with the 9500 is it OK to print irregularly without the heads clogging or does it need a lot of cleaning cycles to get it going. Most of my experience has been with dye inks on my HPs but they do have pigment blacks and have no problem being off for months at a time and there is minimal ink wastage when there is the very occasional head maintenance cycle.

 

[The Hat]

clive
Maintenance on this printer is zero because it takes very good care of itself.
You can leave this thing without printing for months with no problem and it will print perfectly.
The printer takes quite a few minutes to get ready to go on stage but when it does, its performance is second to none.
I hate to say this but I think Canon actually got something right with this one.

 

[clive]

Thanks for the info