Customer Reviews

Canon i9100 Photo Printer

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I picked up this printer to print 11x17 and the occasional 13x19 photo. I've owned a Canon back in 1997, but have been using Epson printers since. Now I'm switching back to Canon for good. This printer is flat out amazing. The print quality is fantastic, as is the design and quality feel of the actual product.

The materials and colors are nice, and not cheap and loud like Epson printers. My other Epson is a photo 820 which was only [$$] but a fortune for ink, and Epson never did finish the drivers for Mac OSX. It was advertised that it could do borderless printing, but it would only do it in OS9 which nobody uses anymore. The Canon prints borderless 13x19 prints in OSX and they're brilliant. Epson's are nice printers, and I think they had the edge for a few years but Canon has clearly caught up. I'm surprised how fast and quiet this printer is, but I guess that's what you get for [$$]. It's worth it though.

I am a graphic designer with a meticulous eye for detail -- trust me, this is a good product.

I needed a good printer for my business to print brochures and photo postcards. I received it today and printed a couple of family pictures I took with my Canon Powershot S20 3.3 Megapixel digital camera on a piece of the Canon Photo Paper Pro 4"x6" (5 sheets are included with the printer) to test the quality. I can truly say that the picture quality using this combo was better than labwork. The colors were more vibrant without the slightest hint of pixels anywhere. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw this beautiful photo print in less than 30 seconds. This printer, I am convinced, is the best you can buy. It does borderless printing in all sizes... Even 13x19! Prints on other papers provided good results but not as stunning as the combo used above. I printed a borderless photo on a piece of regular 8 1/2x11 paper and it looked great!

This printer is truly a marvel and the speed is unmatched with the quality of the prints that rival and surpass professional photo labs. The Canon paper costs a few cents more but is well worth it. Make sure you get Canon Photo Paper Pro and not just the Photo Paper Plus. Ink use is minimal. I printed 5 4x6" photos, 3 5x7" photos and 3 8 1/2x11" photos and the ink level did not go down. I bought mock-up ink carts off of Ebay that cost $10.95 for all 6 carts! Truly, you cannot go wrong with this printer.

This is a perfect printer for a small architectural firm. The photo quality is remarkable - better than any lab has produced for us - and the speed is jaw dropping compared to Epson.

Haven't done large format photos yet - but have regularly printed 11 x 17 B/W CAD drawings - which are incredibly crisp even on plain paper. Tiny type is readable on reduced checkplots. I should have put a stopwatch to it, but it seems that a reduced D size print with complex title bar/graphics comes out in 15 seconds or so. Just received some 13 x 19 paper so that we can print D size (24 x 36) plots at exactly half size - giving accurate 1/8" scale drawings for example for what would be 1/4" scale on the plotter.

Separate ink tanks, quality and speed are what drew us to this printer. Will have to see how the ink lasts to see how economical it is in use.

I have always been an HP fan, but this printer changed my mind. The wide format speaks for itself, but beyond that, I have noticed improved printing speed and print quality. More importantly, the Canon i9100 works perfectly with my Apple Airport Extreme wireless base station. I installed the software (native OSX support) and then attached the printer to the USB port on my Airport Extreme. Rendesvous found it immediately! I have noticed that the delay between clicking print and sending it to the printer is virtually eliminated with the i9100. The only drawback I can see is that I wish it had a larger paper tray. But that is a small problems for a wonderful six color printer!

Being an avid 35mm film and now digital photo taker (primarily nature/wildlife) and having battled through trying to print off both digitally captured and scanned film images on an old Canon BJ, the time was right for a change. I researched the i9100 and Espon 2200 for some time as I wanted the best quality I could get without bankrupting myself and to have the capability of printing large format prints. The Canon won out based on comparative reviews on Amazon.com, relative speed and price as well as compatability with the rest of my camera/digital imaging system.

I've been using the printer for 3 weeks or so now and printed approximately 300 prints, mainly 5x7 but also numerous 8x11 and a couple of 13x19s. The sources for the images ranged from 2mp p&s digital to EOS10D digital SLR to slides scanned from between 2000dpi and 4000dpi. Without exception the i9100 has delivered with excellent results. The printer is fast (almost too fast to keep up with if you get distracted with some other task while printing off multiple pages of 8.5x11) and unbelievably quiet (normal paper loading sounds when the sheet is first fed in but that's about it).

Ink usage is pretty reasonable - I feel like I'm replacing a cartridge fairly regularly but I'm printing off large volumes and haven't noticed anything abnormal. My old printer used to fail to print one ink when first used for the day and required constant cleaning/nozzle checks to come up with usable results. The i9100 has had no such issues and doesn't seem to mind if you don't clean heads that often.

I would recommend that you use good quality paper with the printer but then again why spend this sort of money and feed cheapo paper into it?! Canon's papers work well, naturally, but Kodak Ultima works great with no profiling adjustments etc.

Overall, highly recommended to those who want to print high volumes of prints, large size prints and who care about top quality yet don't want to wait around all day just to get one print to work.

I have heard comments about banding. Under close examination it's process is clean and sharp. I see no banding at all. I have compared a prize 35 mm film photo scanned on my Nikon 4000 ED 35mm film scanner with the same print by a professional photo lab on Kodak exhibition gloss. They are 99% identical. If one has a fine digital file you will be be very pleased... It is super fast and the print heads are user replaceable in case of a clog! ...

I conducted a test on Canon Photo+glossy and Canon inks.
3 weeks in the morinig sun and 3 weeks in the afternoon sun - direct sunlight. To the casual look no fading at all - a very critical look 1-2 % loss. This is very impressive. Even then one has to be very critical under lighted magnification. I have heard of claims of fading - they must be using non canon related supplies. So Canon's claims of 25 years seem very realistic and then some.

Update some months later severe fading on black and almost black images including dark blues. This is with Canon ink and their finest paper. So disappointing! This was in a normal home environmemt!

I purchased this printer as a wide-format replacement for my Canon i850. I assumed that because this was a high-end printer, its print quality would at least equal that of the i850. This is not the case. The i850 has a 2pL printer droplet size, whereas this printer has a 4pL droplet size. The difference is noticible to the naked eye from normal viewing distance. Text printed on the i9100 is heavier and more ragged than text printed on the i850. Photos printed on the i9100 have more abrupt tonal transitions than photos printed on the i850, despite the i9100's having 2 extra ink colors to work with. Closer inspection reveals a much more pronounced dither pattern on the i9100's prints.

Ink consumption seems much greater with this printer than with the i850. I've made only a handful of test prints and I'm already getting warnings from the status monitor that three of the ink tanks are almost empty.

This printer is a lot slower than the i850.

The only advantage I can see (aside from the obvious ability to make larger prints) is that the BCI-6BK black ink used by this printer is less susceptible to smearing than the BCI-3eBK black ink used by the i850.

If you are looking for a good photo printer and don't need wide format, I'd recommend the i960, which is a 2pL, 6-color printer. If you need wide format, wait for the new i9900 (a 2pL, 8-color wide-format printer announced in February).

OK, I am a longtime, die hard Epson user. Until now. After the abuse I endured with the 2000p, and with the new availability of stable (25+ years) dye based inks, I was in a quandary about whether to get the Epson 2200 or look elsewhere.

Obviously, I got the Canon. I haven't made a huge number of prints yet, but the ones I have made have been perfect. Wow! Color management that actually works! And, it's fast fast fast! 8.5x11 in about 3 minutes, not the 8+ minutes of the Epson. And the glossy prints look far better than any pigment inks I have tried with the Epson. Finally, it's quiet. No more buzz-saw to wake the baby. Borderless printing works great. I can't wait to try the 13x19.

After all the pain Epson put me through, I can now smile as they die a slow and painful death at the hands of Canon.

This is a great printer.

cw

'Cause it's worth an extra star! When you pull a 13x19 PERFECT print off this thing, first time out - and the responses you get are always the same ("Holy Cow!" [Amazing] "How'd you do THAT?" "Let's frame that NOW!") you know you've got a winner.
This printer takes you to the next level. Or maybe jumps you up a few levels. If you have dreams of what your photos would look like on a larger scale, dream no more. This will produce prints that will SHOCK people, make them do a double-take, stun them into speechlessness, and garner comments for your work that you can really take some satisfaction in.
I don't want to paint a perfect picture here, I know others have had minor problems to report - nothing's perfect, but this comes close. I've ONLY done 13x19 prints so far (about 20), so I can't speak to how it handles other sizes or special print runs. BTW, Amazon's pricing on this printer - and the 13x19 paper - is unbeatable - I know, I researched this for months before jumping in. Now I'm going back through all my best shots and resizing UP!
Be aware of this - larger prints will make every scanned speck of dust look like a boulder. Before you hit print, take the time to 'heal' your image completely. Look at it at 'actual pixel' size, take your Photoshop healing brush (not clone tool) and clean ALL that crap up, section by section. Work it in a grid so you don't miss anything, because at $2 a sheet you won't want to trash-and-burn till you get it right. I spent about three hours on one scan last weekend, an older negative with some dropouts. It drove me crazy, made my eyes bleed, but the final print was a big YES!!
... 'Nuff said - happy printing! As the kids might say...photography rules! (IF you know the rules - and break them when appropriate!)...JR

This printer is a good choice for black and white 11x17 printing too. I wanted to print schematics and mechanical drawings on up to 11x17 paper as well as the usual office printing chores. It produces very crisp grey scale results on ordinary inkjet paper in "standard" quality. C size schematics are quite readable on letter size if you have good eyes and are comfortable printed on 11x17. A "standard" quality 11x17 OrCAD schematic printed in 75 seconds. The scaling of a TurboCAD v9.0 drawing was accurate to 0.3% which closer than previous laser printers. Have not had any paper handling problems. There was a minor software installation nuisance due to my use of dual monitors and the software's desire to pop up the registration window split between them. All parts were in the box and worked, though you need to buy a USB cable.