imagePROGRAF PRO-310

I can highly recommend the Canon Pro300 or Pro310. I’ve printed 13x19 for 18 years with an Epson 3880 and I find my Canon Pro-300 to be every bit as good.

For colour photos I find the Canon 300/310 to be outstanding and the ink price is relatively reasonable. 

If you're wanting to do high quality "archival" prints and selling them for hundreds of dollars then pigment ink printers are the way to go. For less than $1k your options are Canon Pro 310 or Epson P700. I prefer Canon. If you are making prints to sell for $20-$50 then dye ink printers like Epson Eco-Tank are great.

I just got the new canon prograf 310 and its BEAUTIFUL. interface is def. outdated af but the machine itself prints amazing. It was on sale for 799$ earlier but now at 890$. I wouldnt go with a 200S because it uses Dye instead of Pigment and for a little more you get waaaay nicer prints with pigment. https://preview.redd.it/2o1lawrfa1yf1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50311f331074f0ab126912c1bee1b41a48909eb7 Left was my first print uncalibrated with no profile. Second is reprint with calibrated profile. Its just amazing as it looks. Heavyweight 68lb glossy premium epson paper.

Canon Image ProGraf 310 is a steep learning curve, if you want to use it properly, and it cries out for A3 or even A3+ sized prints, to show its true colours. Inks are not cheap. The cartridges are fairly small. Epson ET8550 is a tank printer, broadly similar to 310, but cheaper to run. It uses five dye based inks, plus pigment black, where the Canon is all pigment and uses a 9 ink system, plus optimiser that seals the pigment to make it moisture resistant. I suspect you would be happier with a smaller footprint printer? I still use a Canon MG7750 but it’s no longer sold new. It uses a six ink system, with just one pigment (black). I’ve been very happy with it for many years, but tank based inkjets are more popular now for home use, rightly.

So I recently made this decision as well. I thought I was going to get the 1100. I wound up with the 310. Since I haven't actually sold anything yet and the prints the 310 creates are huge and the 1100 is about 50% more than the 310 when I bought it, I thought it made sense to get the 310. Save a bit of the foot print and money and see what it's like owning a real printer. I'm not entirely sure I'll do a great job maintaining it. So it's a slightly less risky way to approach printing my photos for sale. Also I'll say I just received my first batch of 13x39in paper and it's huge. Bigger is always better but it would be so rare for me to take advantage of going larger than that that I couldn't see myself doing it.