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Canon IX4000 A3 printer in sucks shock

This is a review of my experiences with the Canon ix4000 A3 printer.

I bought it mainly because it’s in my price range, around £200, and only needs to be “good enough”. I’ve had excellent results with the
IP4xxx series which have produced excellent colour and black and white prints that have passed for professional prints.

The first impression it gives is size. This isn’t unxpected given that it’s an A3 printer, but there’s a good four inches on either side that
adds heft to it. Otherwise it’s all pretty good consumer-grade plastic. Whether it can withstand the kind of abuse I put gear through
only time will tell.

The big difference between this and the “pro” level printer that Edmond Terakopian reviewed is the lack of calibration. I bought Canon “Pro” 6×4 and A4 papers and the “Photo Paper Plus Glossy II” A3 paper. These all have settings in the Mac print settings so I presume there’s at least some awareness of the paper.

Oh, wait. There’s a Canon ICC colour profiles guide:

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/files/Canon_ICC_Profile_Guide.pdf

The trick seems to be to select “ColorSync” in the print settings
menu and then the appropriate settinga for your Canon paper:

MP2 : Matte Photo Paper MP101, quality 2
PR1 : Photo Paper Pro PR101, quality 1
PR2 : Photo Paper Pro PR101, quality 2
SP1 : Photo Paper Plus Glossy PP101, quality 1
SP2 : Photo Paper Plus Glossy PP101, quality 2

As for my screen: it’s uncalibrated. I’m happy with it and prints have been reasonable in the past. I tried doing the manual calibration in the Mac screen setup and ended up with something that was way too cold.

For the purposes of this, I’m going to do 4 tests:

1. Print a couple of colour 6×4′s in various quality settings and compare the color with what’s on my uncalibrated screen.

2. Print some freshly processed B/W 6×4′s and check for banding.

3. Print some A4 prints borderless again testing for quality.

4. Choose the best of the above and print a couple at A3 size.

Colour 6×4′s

The first one is my sleepy booksellers in Les Puces, Paris shot on my old D70 in Adobe Colourspace. (DSC_8640). It lends itself to black and white but the colour version has some nice yellows and greens.

First print fail. I had the monochrome checkbox checked and a border. Go through and double-check all the settings.

Second print colour fail. Compared to the screen the colours came out with a slight brown wash.

OK, change the Colour Management to “Photoshop Manages Colours” and set the printer profile. Third print is much better. Skin tones are closer to what’s on the screen. The print is darker, denser than what’s on the screen but at least the colour tones are better.

Second shot is the rice triangle. This was shot in sRGB on the Canon S90 in JPEG. Yes, I’m sorry. I won’t to that again. This has some nice rich brown tones on the string as well as some lovely texture on the leaves and shadow detail at the top.

Print four with the same settings as print 3 above. Again, darker and more golden than the screen version.

Let’s try a different tack: print straight out of iPhoto with Colour Matching->Canon Colour Matching and Pro paper. Odd. Slightly more golden and now print four looks more “correct”. Stupid eyes.

B/W 6×4′s

OK, now to the real stuff and what I suspect I’ll be doing 90% of the time: black and white. Process this one to a nice contrasty black and white. Print six: yuk. Compared to what came out of the IP4000, this is a dusty greeny grey like an aged family albm pic.

Back to iPhoto, take the original colour pic and print using the greyscale option in the print settings. Print seven with the greyscale option unchecked, print eight with it checked. Seven and eight the same as the PS version.

This is annoying. The ink just doesn’t seem to be black.

Oh forget it. I read the 1* and 2* reviews on Amazon. It’s a common problem.

I’m returning it.

Very disappointed. Bad Canon.

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Sep 03, 2010 | Categories:Photography | Leave A Comment »

Hoxditch Boudoir

Stumbled on this place on the way back from an exhibition at The Printspace. Tucked in beside the railway bridge the golden light poured out and looked so inviting. So I went in. What a gem of a place! A coffee bar that happens to serve booze if you want it.

It looks like it’s been there forever, except that all the old stuff is just a little too new. It used to be a video shop and got converted into this around six months ago by a bunch of Cypriots.

I have to say, the service is more than a little shambolic, like I had to remind them about my change, but they are hugely friendly and to have a coffee and a little booze place open in Hoxditch at night is great.

Maybe of there were more places like this open there’d be less of a booze problem?

Sep 02, 2010 | Categories:Uncategorized | Tags: beer, boudoir, café, canon, canon s90, coffee, hipster, hoxton, london, shoreditch | 2 Comments »

Amsterdam(p) rebooted

This was the first time I’ve been back since I broke up with my girlfriend out there in 2009 and had mixed feelings about it. We had an apartment and a good group of people. There was a gig. On arrival, I almost immediately regretted it finding the Dutchness oppressive again. However, there was more than enough to make up for it: dinner at Pata Negra cheered me up no end, meeting up with my old neighbour the GREAT photographer Andy Tan, the gig and then finally meeting up again with my old expat mates and meeting some new ones too. Oh, and my first Ethiopian food.

It was eye-wateringly expensive though: a half of beer at €2.50, a roast beef roll for €6 and an entrée in a pub for €12-€16. And I spent €26 on four chunks of Dutch cheese.

All in all though, worth it and I have some great pics, a representative selection below. There are some in there I like a LOT. Dawn and Rafters for sure. Also, the picture of the guy nomming herring with the face of the guy in the background is priceless. Real street photography.

Sep 01, 2010 | Categories:Photography, Travel | Tags: amsterdam, canal, cherries, craneporn, dawn, expats, herring, kolk, rafters, rays, scooter, scrap, shadow, shiny, smooch, squash, street photography, sunset, tourist, warmoestraat, whoosh | Leave A Comment »

UK Immigration System – a suggestion

As anyone who knows me knows, we’ve been working on getting my girlfriend a UK fiancée visa. This was a fairly Byzantine process that had some pre-requisites: like me getting my divorce finalised. Dammit. Well, that was only five years in the making and thanks to my previous girlfriend for at least getting the process started! As Louise had been warned out of the country for kinda taking the Mickey with her visa waiver, I’d decamped to Taipei and finished the divorce there, involving several trips to a lawyer to get documents notarised and some profit for UPS getting documents shipped to the UK.

With that done and dusted, out next step was to apply for the visa. We researched, assembled what we thought were the relevant papers and submitted the application. The application process is handled by a third-party called “VFS” who, it has to be said, were efficient, looked over the papers and submitted them to Manila.

Manila? Yes. Taiwan isn’t a real country. There’s no British Embassy there. Everything is handled from Manila.

So we waited and got a refusal. A refusal, it has to be said, on perfectly reasonable grounds: I had nowhere to live in the UK and since I didn’t have them to hand, no bank statements showing I had visible means of support. So, I came back to the UK, fixed both of those things and submitted an appeal. Oh, the looking for somewhere to live: that could take a whole separate post.

The papers say that an appeal could take up to three months but I’d had advice that the “Entry Clearance Manager” could make an immediate reversal. Well, we waited, I called Manila a couple of times (yay for Skype!) and got nice off-fobbing.

Finally, I snapped and wrote what was basically a begging e-mail saying: “look, you’ve got copious documentation that we’ve met the two criteria you refused us on please please please let my woman in the country”.

So they did.

While I was waiting, I did some Googling on the subject and stumbled on a whole mess of visa troubles, mostly to do with students and mostly to do with Manila.

Now, you have to understand immigration and the UK. The right-wing press has managed to collapse “illegal immigrants”, “asylum seekers” bogus or not, and “economic migrants” into one mess of “bloody foreigners” whether or not they are in any way beneficial to the country. Let’s face it though, unless you’re Welsh or Scots, then you’re an immigrant to the island of Greater Britain one way or another.

So these forum posts: these are kids whose parents have saved up to send them to some D-list college no-one’s ever heard of and may have had its accreditation taken away by Immigration recently under the recent bogus college rules anyway. Once the application is denied it’s taking up to a year to sort out and these folks have no clue as to what the hell is going on.

In summary, I think the system is Not Fit For Purpose.

Or at least what I think the purpose should be: let in people who are going to benefit the country either in the short-term, such as my girlfriend to keep me happy or high-quality skilled workers, or the long-term, building relationships with far-flung countries, building guangxi, and spreading the English language to all corners of the globe.

The biggest problem though in this day and age of technology is opacity: when our initial application was with VFS, we could track it at every stage in their part of the process. Once it was with UK Border Control, forget it. It entered a black hole. I have a vision of huge piles of papers bundled in red ribbons and wall to wall archive boxes.

So my one suggestion: let VFS or similar into the workflow. Let them extend it inside the immigration office to people can track what’s going on and at least have some expectation as to when things will happen. After that, maybe even set some targets, but not yet.

The documentation for the process wasn’t bad but a better checklist with the kinds of documents required would help. Oh, and please grow up into the internet age: very often now we don’t have “original bank statements”. It’s all online. You’re going to have to get used to printouts from web pages. The people were nice though, which helps.

So that’s it really. I don’t like to think that my country is damaging itself through either xenophobia or a rubbish system.

Oh, and if we hadn’t got the visa, we’d have moved to Amsterdam and paid tax there where I have a national insurance number and the expat tax breaks. Or Paris.

Aug 27, 2010 | Categories:Travel | Tags: border control, immigration, manila, taiwan, uk, visa | Leave A Comment »

Canon S90 to shoot a gig?

Tonight’s gig, Secret Cinema Band, aren’t one of mine, they belong from a shooting perspective to @magictina, so I didn’t pack my kit, just the S90. Plus I was feeling a bit rubbish. And I’ve had a spat with JWZ and his crappy iPhone shots where he refuses to carry another gizmo and I maintain he has *two* pockets like normal people. I also fancied trying to take some shots with the S90 and took a dozen or so.

Some observations:

The exposure blows out. I had to shoot on -1EV to get a decent exposure even spot metering on the face.
f/2.0 is nice but it’s only at the widest zoom. So as with this picture, you have to get right up in there.
High ISO is pretty rubbish with bad chroma noise. This pic is at ISO800 and just about passable.
Shutter lag means trying to catch a “moment” is Hard.
When musicians move around, a decent shutter speed is key. 1/60 is not quite there. 1/125 would be nice if possible. This pic is 1/80.

Actually, that’s all.

In conclusion, yes, we’re getting there. It’s slightly worse than the D70+50mm f/1.8 when I started doing this and it’s the ISO that really lets it down. Get a decent ISO1600 on these things with a lens that can keep f/2.0 through the zoom range and we’re in business.

Aug 23, 2010 | Categories:Music, Photography | Tags: camden, canon, canon s90, gig, music, powershot s90, proud, review | 4 Comments »

Graveyard – photography cliché #14

Yesterday as we were driving to New Mills for a walk round the, er, old mills, we passed the church and churchyard in Chapel-en-le-Frith. It looked like a good setting to take some shots being all nicely overgrown. It’s also preparation for when I get back to London and have Highgate cemetery on my doorstep for the true cliché! The church dates back to the 13th century and is a good example of its kind.

I only took the 50mm f/1.8 with me with it being the sharpest lens I have in the armoury and I’m still enamoured with the “constraints” concept although I didn’t pre-set any modes like B/W.

The first technical observation I had was that 50mm is actually pretty long in a confined space like a graveyard. I took out the S90 to get some wider shots, but these are all with the 50. It was also afternoon and the sun was out so exposure was an issue with sparkly sun and deep shadows.

There was a weird area with marble slabs and flowers which I’m assuming was for cremations.

If it starts being dank and overcast again I may go back and try to capture the cool greens properly.

All in all though, for a cursory once round a graveyard, I’m reasonably happy. Next time, I’ll take the 24mm.

Aug 15, 2010 | Categories:Photography, Travel | Tags: black and white, chapel-en-le-frith, D300, graveyard, Nikon, Photography, walkabout | 1 Comment »

Channeling Ansel – or not

So, here I am up in the High Peaks area of Derbyshire, with some pretty epic scenery all around. Having been fired up by the Freeman book, I decided to scale Eccles Pike, yes, as in cake, which has a 360 degree view all around and wait for the sun to get low in the sky for a nice view of the surrounding hills and valleys. I was also armed with a Velbon tripod courtesy of Evil Dave.

Observation 1: Ansel had thermal underwear, gloves, scarf and hat.

Yes, despite it being August, it was frickin’ cold. Then I waited for the light to do interesting things: break through the cloud giving shafts of light maybe; or for the golden light to light up a valley side interestingly.

Observation 2: Nature doesn’t do what you want.

I started setting up the tripod, anticipating some f/8 goodness as the light failed, only to find that it was missing the baseplate. Bad Dave, no beer.

Observation 3: Dry run your kit before you climb a mountain.

OK, hand-held and rock-perching it was to be. If you know me, you know I have a thing for sunsets and the very occasional sunrise. This time was no exception. The shot below is straight out of the camera. I have variations on this from 12mm with a pinpoint of gold with illuminated clouds fading to darkness to full 200mm frame-filled gold. This is in the middle at 70mm with plenty of gold and some cloud and some silhouetted trees and hills.

Observation 4: Don’t fight nature. If it gives you sunsets, take them.

I have some landscape shots and I’ll play with them as soon as iPhoto finishes. Not convinced though. As soon as it stops raining, I’ll have another bash.

Aug 12, 2010 | Categories:Photography, Travel | Tags: ansel adams, D300, derbyshire, experiments, high peaks, landscape, Nikon, Photography, sunset, tourist | Leave A Comment »

Review – Michael Freeman – The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography

Over the course of my photographic journey, a couple of times I’ve read something that’s inspired me to the point I’d like to delete most of what I’ve shot and start again. This is one of those times. I’ve always been inspired by black and white photography, starting with Jean-Loup Sieff and more recently with experiments with on-camera black and white and how a black and white picture changes the viewer’s perceptions.

On my return to the UK I discovered I’d ordered this while I was away and pretty much devoured it in one session. From a book nerd point of view, it’s lovely: good paper, good colour and only a couple of forgivable typos. It’s very well illustrated with photos giving examples of what’s being talked about in the text.

The book breaks down into four main sections:

1. The Black and White tradition
2. Digital Monochrome
3. Creative Choices
4. Printing and Display

As you can see, only one section is devoted to the actual process of creating black and white images.

The first section is about the history of black and white photography, its evolution, the pioneers and the way it is perceptually different from colour photography. It also discusses how photography evolved more or less totally separately from other fine arts. The subsection titles such as “Shape”, “Structure”, “Tonal Nuance” and so on should give a clue to this. There’s even a little bit of biology in there discussing how different wavelengths of light are interpreted in the eye.

The third section, having covered the techniques then lays out how to use the covered techniques to fulfill the photographer’s artistic vision giving examples from the greats like Ansel Adams, Bill Brandt, Paul Strand and so on.

The final section is about printing and the various options for display from books to hanging on walls.

The second section, about the technical details translates techniques such as filters from film into the digital world. This was the epiphany for me. Having understood the limitations of plain desaturation and having used simple three-channel mixing for portraiture, this completely opened up the possibilities for me. It’s also led to me regretting not having shot RAW with my point and shoot over the last few months!

In summary, this is a great book. It’s not just a techniques manual, it’s a wide-ranging thesis on a subject many of us have taken for granted.

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Aug 02, 2010 | Categories:Photography | 1 Comment »

Chapel-En-Le Frith – High Peaks

OK, so the peaks aren’t quite as high as the ones I left behind in Taiwan but by British standards they’re pretty rugged and sheep-laden. I took a hike up to Eccles Pike which has a lovely view in both directions and over Coombs reservoir. The local cottagery is lovely. And as you can see, the skies were impressive too.