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Home >> Photography >> Digital Canon CP-330 Compact Photo Printer In the good old days, you loaded some film into a camera and after exposing 24 or 36 shots, you took the film to the local lab (whether it be a pro lab, drugstore, or supermarket) for one-hour processing and printing to 4x6 sized paper. You placed the prints into albums and every time the friends or relatives would visit, you pulled out the albums for viewing and catching up on the growth and phases of life that little Johnny or Jane had gone through since the last time the friends and family visited. Today, you take photos of little Johnny or Jane whenever you want and however many you want without worrying about 24 or 36 at-a-time exposures, and throw them up on Facebook or Pbase so that your friends and family can view within minutes of you snapping the photo. The online gallery has taken over from the traditional photo album and the computer hard drive has taken from the shoebox that you used to use to store the negatives and prints that never made it into the album. I envision a time when a future generation of kids will have never known what a traditional photo album is, due to everything being online or digitally displayed in electronic frames or via multimedia in the form of slideshows played back on the TV, computer. Or as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates envision, some kind of future appliance that will take over from discrete computers, TVs and stereos, as the family’s all-in-one entertainment centre. My kids still know what a traditional photo album is, or at least my take on it, but they know nothing of film. When a photo is taken, they expect to be able to see it immediately on the rear LCD screen. Back in the day when I still shot on occasional roll of film, my older kids would be confused as to why they could not view the image on the back of the F100 or Bronica. Recently at work, I had occasion to show some photo books I created. It seemed to have sparked off some creative interest amongst a couple of my coworkers, as I later heard about them creating and ordering photo books of their own from online sources. The interest in them made me calculate the true cost of putting the albums together and I was surprised at how much one of my Disneyland vacation albums cost to produce. About $75 to $80 for a single 15-page album, with most of that cost taken up by the high quality Moab Entrada 190 matte paper and Epson K3 ink for the R2400, which is mostly used for matte paper printing as the 4800 is dedicated for photo glossy paper. One of my brothers-in-law stated that he has little use for traditional photos after receiving a Canon digicam as a gift a few years back. He’s all into creating DVD slideshows with ProShow Gold and throwing in music and other effects. The kids love it, but the kids also love being able to actually hold a photo in their hands and viewing it whenever they want. With a slideshow, they can’t go back a couple of frames, they have to wait for the show to be over before being able to see a particular image or series again. To me, a slideshow is still a supplement to a traditional album, not a replacement for it. I think a lot of other photographers feel the same as me, which is why there are so many photo quality printers available on the market. In the majority of cases, the photo quality printers means an inkjet printer from one of the three main brands competing in this market; Epson, HP and Canon. The inkjet printer has evolved over the dozen or so years since the first Photo Stylus printer produced by Epson. Epson and others have overcome longevity and color fastness issues and while there is still room for improvement, only a few diehards (B&W printers) would suggest that the inkjet print cannot be the equal or superior to a print made in the traditional darkroom. The improvements needed for inkjet printers are for mating pigment inks with glossy photo paper to eliminate bronzing and gloss differential. While it’s plainly obvious that the inkjet printer is king of the mountain when it comes to personal printing options, it’s not the only contender, although these also-rans tend to summit only mole hills. The dye sub printer has been around for a number of years and offers some advantages that the inkjet printer, even now, might still have some difficulty with. The dye sub printer uses technology quite different from dye or pigment inks sprayed out through tiny little nozzles onto the paper. Just as inkjet printers are actually CMYK devices (they just convert the RGB data to CMYK during the printing process), so too are dye sub printers, except that the printing process uses CMY coloured ribbons instead of ink. There is no K ribbon, which would be black, because in theory, combining cyan, magenta and yellow should produce a perfect black. Life is not perfect though and inkjet printers need dedicated K ink, because of the impurities of the other colours used. The K colour is also an issue for dye sub printers, for which some users have complained of muddy blacks and inability to produce a true black color. When printing with a dye sub printer, the paper is pulled backwards and forwards at least three times, one for each colour ribbon. Most dye sub printers pass the paper through four times, with the fourth pass being a clear protective layer to guard against moisture, UV light and possibly oily fingers (we’ll find out later on how good this protective layer is).
At the end of the process, typically about a minute for a 4x6, you end up with a continuous tone photograph that should look little different from the prints received at a photo lab…or, so goes the marketing hype from dye sub printer makers. Background I was curious about the CP330 due to the availability of sticker label paper available for it, as I had a little project in mind for my son’s hockey team. As it turned out, I couldn’t find any of the label paper I wanted with any convenience, so the CP330 did not work out for my project, but since I had it anyway, I thought I’d give it a go to see if the quality was okay. Regular readers may recall postings from last year when I discussed receiving some test prints from an expensive Sony dye sub printer, a unit meant for volume printing. The Sony, along with other competitive printers from Kodak, Shinko or Mitsubishi seemed like the ideal tool for shooting events on location, or for producing 4x6 prints post event, such as for weddings. The larger, pro-oriented units offer very fast printing speeds and relatively reasonable per-print cost relative to inkjet, which can be a bit pricey when producing small sized prints. The question though is how is the print quality? Fast printing and reasonable cost don’t mean much if the quality is not good enough. The Sony printer that I received the test prints from would have required color tweaking to try and match the color fidelity of a properly color managed output from my Epson K3 printer. I could live with some color tweaking, because there are no profiles available for the Sony, but what I couldn’t live with is the paper stock. Thin, glossy and cheap feeling with a peculiar line pattern seen when viewing the print at an angle. Not good enough for professional presentation. I also demoed a Canon dye sub at my local store a little bit after receiving the Sony test prints and I was not impressed enough to spend the $100 to buy one, which is saying something given that I can (and have) spend $100 on any number of frivolous and generally useless items related to computers, audio and photography. But, I couldn’t bring myself to do so for something that would seem pretty useful. However, that was then, this is now, and I didn’t have to spend any of my own money to try out the CP330 J
Canon CP330
It has two USB connections for connecting to just about any type of USB capable camera and computer. It’s PictBridge compatible, so I can easily connect my wife’s Sony W1 digicam to the CP330 and print on demand without having to filter the file through the computer, or be stuck having to use a Canon digicam…not that Canon makes bad digicams; in fact Canon makes some pretty nice ones.
My use of the CP330 is limited to just the 4x6 postcard sheets of paper, so you’ll forgive me if I miss out on some of its other features and accessories available. As far as I know, for each type of paper available for the CP330, you need to use the appropriate paper tray to connect to the printer.
I used the KP-36IP package of 4x6 postcard paper. This package includes 36 sheets of paper and a ribbon cartridge good for the same number of prints. As the name would indicate, the postcard paper does in fact have the traditional postcard sections at the back for writing about your travels and an address section for mailing it back to friends and family.
Use and operation is pretty straightforward whether you use it as a standalone printer, or connected to the computer. Computer connection requires the installation of the appropriate driver, which is available for download from the Canon USA website. Through the computer, the CP330 operates as any other printer would; select the printer from the list of printers installed on the computer and then go through some basic setting adjustments through the Canon driver. And, when I say basic, I do mean basic. Even entry-level Epson printers offer more options, but the typical CP330 purchaser and user is not likely to care or desire a multitude of options when printing.
Which leads nicely to my next comment, or rather question; how the heck do I color manage this thing? As far as I know, there are no profiles to speak of available for the Canon dye sub printers and maybe even the professional quality dye sub printers from Kodak, Sony, et al. don’t either. With no profiles and with most profiling packages needing at least letter sized sheets to print their profiling targets on, what’s a color management geek to do? Actually, I thought that I could access the profiling charts used by ColorVision for their PrintFIX Pro package and crop it into four quadrants and print each with the CP330. Then for reading the patches, I’d tape the back of the 4x6 prints to each other to make a letter sized sheet again. But, I didn’t bother because, well, it’s a fair bit of work for a device that I’m not that interested in owning (as if I need another printer in my house) Thus, I printed as is using default settings or with some slight color tweaks in the Canon driver. Print Quality Boosting the red color produced a more pleasing and more accurate print, but it wasn’t a match for the print produced on the Epson R2400 using Premium Glossy Photo Paper or Premium Semi Gloss Paper. For these Epson prints, I used profiles created with either a GretagMacbeth or X-Rite printer profiling suite. Using a picture of my son during a hockey game as a test image, I printed five different versions of the image:
1&2 were very close, but not quite a perfect match, however, an Epson and/or color managed relationship could easily be seen in the color fidelity and overall warm tone of the photo. The warmth compared to the CP330 prints is akin to using daylight or shady white balance white outside. Mostly aesthetically pleasing, but in some situations, such as a cold hockey arena, you don’t necessarily want warm tones in a cool, blue environment.
On its own, I thought the CP330 with the plus 1 red adjustment produced a pretty nice looking photo even though it was not accurate like the Epson prints. Over the years, I’ve read an article or two about Pict Bridge capable printers not producing very good output straight from the camera and that connecting the printer to the computer would still result in a better looking print. I tried this out using a quick snapshot of the first heavy snowfall in Vancouver for 2007 (December 2) taken with my wife’s Sony W1 digicam. I copied the JPEG file to the Toshiba notebook and printed four versions of the image.
Can you guess which print produced the most accurate and best looking photograph? Yes, the Epson R2400 in a color managed system was far and away superior in this example, as can be seen in the photo below (the comparison photo is missing print #2).
While I grouse about the color, one aspect of the dye sub print quality that I appreciated is absolutely no bronzing whatsoever compared to Epson K3 output on glossy or semi gloss papers. The water resistance of dye sub prints is quite good, as I rubbed a CP330 print with a wet index finger to see if any smudging might occur. However, when I did the same with a long dried Epson R2400 print, I found the Epson to be similarly resistant to moisture and finger prints. I speculate that the CP330 could probably provide more neutral colors if properly profiled, but it is not of much interest to me due to two reasons, the use of larger than 4x6 paper with perforated edges that must be torn away, and a peculiar paper surface that when seen in oblique angles (same as for checking for bronzing) line patterns can be discerned.
Some dye sub papers show this pattern more obviously, like the expensive Sony unit I received samples from last year, while the Canon papers are much more subtle. In my not so humble opinion, such paper is not suitable for professional presentation, but then to be fair, the CP330 is far from being a professional printer. It takes about a minute for it to print and during that time, you can hear it work away at moving the paper back and forth four times. It does not inspire confidence that it would survive a medium sized wedding job needing 500 prints. However, as a fun little family snapshot printer, I admit that my initially negative thoughts about it have mellowed and I think it would be a fine little unit for more moderate users not looking for the last word in color accuracy in their prints. You do have to be aware of the higher per print costs though compared to outside labs. Checking some prices at Vistek, my estimate of per print cost is $0.37 per 4x6 print (not counting taxes or S&H). Most consumer labs charge about $0.29 and if you order in bulk (100 or more) some places will lower the cost to $0.26 per print (also not counting taxes). I imagine a place like Costco could be even less.
Conclusion While the CP330, or whatever its current iteration of it is from Canon, is not of much interest as a pure 4x6 printer, its ability to produce business card sized prints is intriguing for producing, well, business cards. However, instead of buying my own printer, maybe I’ll just hang onto the CP330 for long enough to print off some cards for myself J |
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