Memory Pods, March 2015 copyright Douglas Stockdale
Yes, there is a slightly used Canon Pro-1 printer now sitting in the studio. The Epson 4800 is in the storage area pending a posting on Craig’s List, which will also includes a new in-the-box 220ml Photo Black ink cartridge. The Canon Pro-1 is only 13″ wide but utilizes the Canon pigment ink, versus the dye for the currently available Canon Pro-10. My goal is to proof on the Pro-1 printer and then up size to a 24″ Canon printer which uses the same pigment ink. At the moment, I plan to use the 24″ Canon printer in the LACP photo-lab located in Hollywood. That will be another story!
I picked the used Pro-1 printer up in L.A. this weekend and as stated by Ryan, it certainly did require some new ink cartridges; seven of these were needed to get the printer up and running. Between the local Sammy’s Camera in Costa Mesa and Pro-Photo-Connection in Irvine; done. I had already downloaded the Pro-1 printer driver to the iMac, so that essential part was completed.
Once the new inks were installed, the printer appeared to be ready. From past experience with the Epson, and to be a bit conservative, I ran a head cleaning first. done. I had also purchase some Canon Photo Plus Semi-gloss paper as I had a ton of Epson papers that I had collected over the past fifteen years, but no Canon paper. Again, from past experience, I knew that Canon would provide color profiles (icc) for their papers and printer and not really incentified to provide the icc profiles for any Epson papers.
For the printer color management testing I am using the image from my Memory Pods project above. I had used an old sheet of Kodak Soft Gloss just to make sure the the feed and printer were working okay; at the moment the rear paper feeder does not seem to know that the paper is there and I keep getting an error message. Meanwhile the top feed appears to work fine, so I will come back to why the rear paper feed is not working later as I really need to have a good quality printer working as soon as possible. The colors for the Kodak paper were really out of whack and much lower in contrast compared to the image that is on my recently color calibrated monitor.
Regretfully the Canon paper did not appear a whole lot better for the color comparison but the contrast was pretty close. Fortunately I recently purchased the X-Rite i1 studio color management system which works with both a monitor and a printer. So for the rest of the day it appears that I will be creating some color profiles for this printer and some of the papers I intend to use. Let’s see if I can get quickly obtain a really close match.
If it is not one thing, it’s another.
I do have a printing project to get completed for my Medium Photo workshop later this month, so nothing like a dead-line to create some inspiration, but a least at this stage of the game, no stress (yet!).
Cheers!
Doug
Singular Images 