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Rangefinder Magazine
June 2004

First Exposure: Canon i960 by John Rettie

The Canon i960 Bubblejet printer produces photo-quality prints up to 8.5x11 inches in size.

When I first began preparing this review I was trying out the Canon i950 photo printer, but before I completed the review I got word the printer would be replaced by an upgraded model, called the i960. Such is progress in this industry. It seems that no sooner has a new model hit the market than it’s made obsolete by a newer model.

Not to worry though, as it often turns out that many new printers do not deliver a significant upgrade anymore. Often it’s little more than a subtle improvement in quality or the addition of more features. That was certainly the case with these two Canon inkjet printers as the quality is supposedly identical but the newer model has several added features.

Undoubtedly, Epson has set the pace during the past few years as producer of the best inkjet printers for photographers. It was the first company to introduce printers specifically to produce photographic quality prints and was the first with more than four inkjet colors for improved dynamic range.

However, Epson no longer has the market for photographic printers all to itself as demonstrated by the Canon i960 printer.

A unique feature of the i960 is a tray that holds 4x6-in. paper simultaneously with 8.5x11-in. sheets.

Unlike other manufacturers, Canon calls its printers “Bubble–jet” printers. From an end user’s perspective, it’s not really a big difference in technology. In a Canon printer, small resistors generate the thermal effect used to drive the ink droplet through the nozzle. MicroFine Droplet Technology is Canon’s moniker for the latest versions of its Bubblejet engine. The i960 features a 1.07-inch-wide, high-density printhead with 3072 nozzles delivering droplets as small as two picoliters for an official resolution of 4800x1200dpi.

The i960 can print up to 8.5x11 (borderless) and costs about $199. There are several differences between Canon and Epson printers in the way they operate, and these differences become apparent as soon as one opens the packaging. For starters, each of the six colors is in separate tanks. Canon calls it the “Think Tank System.” As regular users of inkjet printers know only too well, colors tend to deplete at different rates. While occasional users may not notice this fact, it is certainly better to be able to install individual cartridges as needed rather than replacing a single cartridge containing multiple colors just because one color has run dry.

	Count them—there are 3072 nozzles in the print head on the i960 printer.

However, perhaps the more significant difference on the i960 is the use of a separately installed printhead. Epson printers have a printhead permanently installed in the printer. Most of the time this is no problem, but when the head becomes badly clogged it’s nearly impossible to clean it without taking the printer into a service center. What’s worse, the cost of a replacement printhead for an Epson is often close to the cost of a new printer.

Hopefully, one will not have to replace a printhead, but it’s nice to know that the removable one on a Canon printer can be cleaned more easily, and a replacement unit, if required, is not nearly as costly.

Like most printers, at least those costing only a few hundred dollars, the i960 connects via a USB (2.0 or 1.1) cable to either a Mac or a PC. The printer is easy to set up once the printhead and the six ink cartridges have been snapped into place and the driver (software) loaded. Several programs are included with the printer. They are aimed at amateur photographers, although the photo stitching software is pretty good.

Actually one of them, Easy-PhotoPrint, is a program for printing JPEG images that could prove useful for pro photographers since it allows quick and easy setup for printing in a variety of sizes and ganging up multiple prints on one sheet of paper. For example, sometimes I found it quicker to use this program for doing quick print jobs rather than loading Photoshop.

One of the beauties of the i960 is the separate printhead and ink cartridges.	You can prove to yourself that a cartridge is empty by looking through the transparent plastic.	It’s easy to get at the six individual ink cartridges when they need changing.

In use, the i960 proved to be quick, printing an 8x10 in less than 90 seconds and a borderless 8.5x11 print in less than two minutes. The most amazing aspect, though, is its quietness. In fact, it’s so quiet that on several occasions I actually had to look at the printer to make sure it was printing. It’s far quieter than other inkjet printers I have tried and much quieter than the Minolta laser printer I reviewed a couple of months ago.

One unique function on the i960 is the separate tray for holding 4x6 paper. It is placed above the regular tray that holds 8.5x11 sheets of paper. When one wants to print 4x6 images, there is no need to remove the letter-sized paper. Instead a knob is turned, and it feeds in the smaller sheets of paper—quite a boon if you need to print two sizes regularly. However, the choice of paper size cannot be controlled by the computer, and there is no warning on the computer as to which tray has been chosen, making it all too easy to forget to set the printer to the correct paper size.

Easy-Photoprint is one piece of software included with the i960 that could prove useful for pro photographers.

I was more than happy with the quality of the output produced on Canon’s own photo paper. I did not need to make any adjustments or change any color settings in order to get acceptable prints. I also tried printing on some non-Canon paper and found results were fine. Regular text output is almost as good as that from a laser printer.

The i960 is one of the first printers on the market to incorporate PictBridge, a new system that allows prints to be made directly from a camera hooked up via a USB cable. PictBridge is being included with more and more cameras from several manufacturers.

For example, the Canon EOS-10D I own gained PictBridge capabilities after I downloaded an update to the current firmware. Once again, it’s a useful feature should you, or, more likely, someone in your family, want to make quick prints and cannot be bothered to turn on the computer. It’s a simpler alternative to printers that include storage card readers and LCD screens.

During the few months I have been using the printer, I actually ran out of ink. As one would expect, the black cartridge emptied first. It was a pleasure to remove the empty cartridge and be able to verify that it was indeed empty as the cartridges are transparent. Unlike other printers, Canon’s printer optically checks the real level of ink instead of relying on a usage formula to estimate the amount of ink remaining at any given time. A few weeks later, the magenta cartridge became the second one to empty. Again, it was satisfying to only have to replace a single color cartridge rather than one with combined colors. It proves how efficient it is to have a printer with individual cartridges for each color.

	An USB port in front is used to connect PictBridge- enabled cameras directly to the printer, avoiding the need for a computer.

Another test I ran, accidentally as it turns out, was to not use the printer for about four weeks. When I turned it back on I expected to find the printhead had become clogged and I would need to run it through a series of cleaning cycles. However, everything was fine. It did a short self-test and ran some ink though the nozzles before printing, but there was not an excessive amount of “cycling” noises emanating from the printer. Like many inkjet users, I have had my problems in the past with inkjet printers becoming clogged after sitting unused for some time, so finding the i960 working normally was encouraging.

Overall, I found the i960 to be a robust photo printer that produces perfectly good photo-quality prints that should satisfy all but the most fastidious users. It is fast, amazingly quiet and appears to be economical in its usage of ink, thanks largely to the individual ink cartridges that really do fully empty before forcing the user to replace them.

P.S. By the time you read this review, there may well be a Canon i990 replacement model available. It’s a seven-color (red is the seventh color) inkjet that has been on sale overseas for several months. Canon has not confirmed if it will be sold in the U.S. As I suggested at the beginning of this review, it probably only delivers a minor upgrade compared to the i960. It should also be noted there’s an eight-color (green is the eighth color!) 13x19 printer, the i9900, which went on sale here and overseas (as the i9950) in May. Like other printer manufacturers, Canon insists on selling different models from one country to another, so it’s really confusing to know what exactly is available at times.

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. Readers can contact him by email at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail in care of Rangefinder magazine.