STRONG ECONOMY
It is said often enough that you really haven’t got a photograph until a print has been made. With this in mind, photo enthusiasts may be keen to follow through, but are often rightly deterred by a number of concerns. Is an A3+ format printer going to be big enough? What will it cost? Are the inks really so expensive? And can the prints last at least a generation or two? Canon’s PIXMA iP8760 offers a solution. It’s best described as pretty basic with no ‘bells and whistles’ yet it does a creditable job. It’s currently discounted to less than $300 (RRP is $329), it’s not too expensive to run and it uses dye-based inks that produce prints which should last more than 100 years in dark storage. But this A3+ printer is dedicated to the cause of making prints: It is not a multifunctional machine. One double-size black pigment cartridge is for document printing or typical text (giving about 500 pages) while the five ‘Chromalife 100+’ dye-based inks are for photo printing. They consist of black, cyan, magenta, yellow and grey.
Dye-based inks are cheaper than pigments, exhibit strong colour, are capable of high resolution (in this case 9600x2400 dpi with one-picolitre droplets) and are suitable for all paper surfaces, especially gloss and semi-gloss. Dyes penetrate paper surfaces whereas pigments reside on the top. There is no gloss differential or bronzing problems on gloss media with dyes, and greater resistance to scuffing and scratching.
The iP8760 comes suppliedthree A4 sheets of Canon Photo Paper Plus. As is usually the case these days, a USB cable is not included with the printer.
