Ad Terras Per Aspera

I’ve heard a few good things about Adorama’s ProJet Elite Inkjet Paper, a few people I know have started using it because it’s supposably very high quality archival type inkjet paper that reproduces colors great, and is cheaper than other similar brands.

In turn, they attempted to convert me to the cult of ProJet Elite, and I’ve gotten nothing but horrible results with my Canon i9900, which I reviewed not too long ago.

So far, I have tested only ProJet Elite Picture Rag Warm Tone 190gsm¹. It does reproduce colors semi-accurately, but it looks very faded, and blacks are a dark grey. Also, dark areas appear splotchy, and sometimes very light areas end up appearing bright white.

Tested vs Canon Photo Paper Pro² (glossy, but reproduces colors amazingly), ProJet Elite Picture Rag fails horribly. If you’re looking for a decent brand of thick matte paper, look elsewhere.

Please note, however, that this does not reflect on Adorama as a fine purveyor of photography goods in any way. I’ve never had problems with any of my orders with Adorama, and they often carry products cheaper than Amazon, and even carry products that Amazon doesn’t. I still recommend Adorama as a good place to shop… I just don’t recommend their paper.

_{[1]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Matte Photo Paper³, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print Type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 elite warm tone” printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[2]: In Photoshop CS2, with the printer set to Photo Paper Pro, Quality 1, Auto halftoning, Print type none, borderless printing on at the 2nd notch, and any options in the effects tab off; with Photoshop set to “Let Photoshop Decide” color handling, the “Canon i9900 PR1″ printer profile, and Perceptual rendering intent with black point compensation on.}

_{[3]: The Matte Photo Paper setting produces better results than Other Photo Paper and Plain Paper with ProJet Elite Picture Rag.}

Update, February 7th 2006: I’ve now tried every combination of setting the printer driver to every media type, color adjustments with ICM and print type; and I’ve also tried changing settings various settings in Photoshop (color handling, rendering intent, and black point compensation).

There is simply no way to print good results on this paper using the Canon i9990 inkjet printer. If I rated products on a 5 star scale, Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper would get 0 stars.

The problem with owning a $900 camera is the fact you always want to buy just one more thing for it. Just one more thing. Just one last thing. The newest one last thing at the moment is a Sigma EX Multi-coated UV Filter, 58mm.

Ultimately, unless you actually need a UV filter (ie, for outdoor shots with a lot of haze, wide open blue sky, or reflective water), you usually just buy one as a way to protect your lens by not having it open to the elements; it’s easier (and cheaper) to buy a new $20 UV filter after you ruin it, than a new $150+ lens.

That said, this filter is optically clear, and doesn’t affect the brightness, color hue, or color saturation of shots, and is made of a single piece of glass with a solid metal frame that screws right into the front of my lens, and my existing lens cap fits over that. So, now I don’t have to worry about cleaning dust and other destructive substances off my lens, since the lens filter seals the front of the lens off from the outside; so I just have to clean the outside of the filter.

It weighs an ounce or two, so it does make the camera feel heavier; not that its a bad thing, I always thought my Rebel XT was a tad on the light side. Even though it weighs more, it doesn’t effect the autofocus function in any way (including the rate at which it focuses), and isn’t heavy enough to cause lens creep¹.

I paid around $30 for mine from Adorama, and I’m quite happy with the performance. Since I’ve never owned a lens filter before, I was worried that it would alter the quality of the shots, but it hasn’t in any way. If you own a professional-level camera, I highly recommending buying a Sigma EX Multi-coated UV Filter for your lens(es), too.

_{[1]: A problem with some lenses where the moving part of the zoom lens slowly moves outwards/inwards when tilting the camera forwards/backwards.}

As I mentioned earlier, I’m now the proud owner of a Canon i9900 wide format printer, and I’d like to mention upfront that this printer rocks beyond all belief. Canon managed to do everything right with this printer, and it shows.

For a mere $350-400, you get a printer that is fast, quiet, produces great prints, good looking, and charismatic. If there is a printer you can pick up chicks with, this is that printer.

Speed: Doing borderless photos at the highest quality using Canon’s Photo Paper Pro, I get a 4×6″ in about 35 seconds, a 8×10″ in about 50 seconds, and a 13×19″ in about 3 minutes. Watching it do a 13×19″ that fast is almost like a magic trick.

Noise: Ultimately none. The specifications in the manual say 37db maximum when printing, but the only thing I hear is the clunk-clunk sound of it feeding pages into itself, and the occational swish-swish as the head goes back and forth while printing. Its quieter than any printer I’ve ever owned.

Photo Quality: I’ve been printing out 8 megapixel images from my Canon Rebel XT, and the photo quality is amazing. Compared to, say, the Kodak digital printing booth at Walmart, for roughly the same price per picture[1], I get much better quality. And, of course, it beats any consumer or prosumer photo printer I’ve owned (including two Canons and a Lexmark[2].) I haven’t found a good picture to push the envelope of this printer’s 4800×2400 DPI output, but I find text to be crisp and sharp, as if it came out of a high end laser printer.

Size and weight: Well, I won’t say the printer is small. It being a wide format printer, it has to be big enough to print 13″ wide paper, plus enough room on each side for the print head to completely clear the paper. The specifications in the manual say it weighs 21 pounds, and has a WxHxD of 23x7x13″, but that isn’t really big at all. The volume is roughly four times that of a Canon consumer printer, and they pack a lot of features in such a tiny space.

Ink usage and price: You’d expect a printer like this to chew through ink like crazy, right? Wrong. I’ve printed over 75 4×6″s, a 8×10″, a 13×19″, and two pages of a PDF so far, and according to the ink level viewer in the driver, I haven’t used much ink at all (see the screenshot to the left to see for yourself). Amazon is currently selling all the 8 seperate ink tanks for around $8 a peice, so the cost per unit of ink is lower than most professional printers, and lower than any consumer printer that uses the single all-in-one carts with the built-in print head.

Asthetic quality: I used to think all printers were ugly, and were far too ornate for their function; or on the other end of the spectrum, too boxy and plain. The Canon i9900 manages to perform well and look good doing it. As a review said (one I read before buying the printer) it looks like they “sliced a cylinder in half”, and I have to agree. Also, the coloring is a tasteful blend of black and dark silver, and the front panel only has two buttons, a light, and a USB plug for plugging a camera directly into the printer.

Other things I like about this printer is how it folds up on itself to keep dust out: the front tray folds in and up to prevent stuff entering from the front, and the paper holder in the back folds down to prevent dust and small objects from simply falling inside. I can open the front panel with the tray and paper holder closed, so replacing ink carts is a breeze.

Honestly, I’d pay even more for this printer than what Canon sells this for. Canon’s MSRP is $500, Amazon sells it for around $450, and I’d pay around $600-700 for it; its very hard to get printers that are supported by Linux that are any good.

_{[1]: Its about $0.50 per 4×6″ at the local Kodak booth, and I pay about $0.60 cents per 4×6″ in a 120 pack of Canon’s Photo Paper Pro. Photo Paper Pro is thicker, brighter, and more resistant to mishandling than Kodak’s paper in my opinion, so it’s quite worth the extra ten cents.}

_{[2]: I hate Lexmark’s consumer printers. Lexmark refuses to release Linux drivers for them, and they have threatened to sue anyone who tries to. I would normally say “boycot Lexmark”, but lets face it, Lexmark consumer printers are some of the lowest quality printers produced with some of the highest priced ink. Get a cheap Canon for a similar price, you’ll be much happier.}

Update: I’ve blogged about using Adorama ProJet Elite inkjet paper with my i9900, and its worth a read if you want to know how well the i9900 interacts with this brand of paper.