The B&W Printer that Could. . .

I was introduced to the ip4300 by one of Canon's field reps.  He told me that he owned an ip4300 that he used mostly for black and white printing and that other professional photographers he knew also owned ip4300's which were used for the same purpose.  Recently, black and white prints have undergone a resurgence in popularity - some subjects are simply more suited for that type of rendition.  The big problem is getting those black and white prints converted from color and printed properly - looking good is NOT easy.

These pro photographers generally owned other printers which ranged in cost from $500 to several thousand dollars*, so it was a bit of a shock to discover that they were relying on a $100 printer for professional output.  Why?  It turns out that the 5-ink ip4300 actually does a very high quality job printing photos in black and white - it does a better job than most 6 and 8 color printers costing many hundreds.  Furthermore, it does that quality work very, very quickly. 

I had been looking for a good printer for black and white to supplement my 6 color, wide-carriage Canon i9100 so I bought an ip4300 when it was on sale for $80.  Things couldn't get any better than that considering the ink tanks alone were $73 retail! (Printer manufacturers believe in the old "give away the razor and profit on the blades" philosophy.)

Amazement

Yes, the ip4300 is a spectacular black and white printer which makes it easy to ignore the fact that it's also a good color printer.  Did I say "good"?  The proper adjective is "excellent."

Canon Wizardry

Canon is doing things some "Wizard work" under the hood of these 5-ink printers which make them just about equivalent to a 7 or 9 tank printer.  This is one result of the hundred of millions Canon recently invested in printer head and ink technology.  Is the ip4300 as good as my $500 vintage Canon i9100?  Nope, it's better, at least when printing on matte paper which is my usual paper choice.  (More on paper choice in another article.)

Color Profiles for the ip4300 

The initial result I got from the ip4300 encouraged me to construct printer profiles for it - I knew I would be using this printer a lot and I wanted to get excellent results from my favorite 3rd party papers.  (Now as much as I like Canon printers, I'm not in love with any of their papers but I'd love to try the high-end German fine-art papers they recently introduced.)

Profiles Available

So far I've made profiles for 5 or 6 papers and I'm going to make those available to the owners of Canon 5-ink printers.  See my article:  Canon 5-ink Profiles which will have information on how to obtain and use those profiles.  Also, you'll need to read: Photo Printing Tips: Using 3rd Party Paper.

* printers such as the Canon ip9000, ipf5000, Epson1800, 2200, 3800, 4800, HP 130, etc.