Canon - PIXMA PRO-200

The post is nine months old. I have since bought a Canon Pro 200 printer, an eight-ink dye printer. Prints show no discernable grain structure whatsoever, they are every bit as smooth as the lab print. The printer is well supported by paper manufacturers, too, who all have ICC profiles for the Pro200. It prints well on both glossy and rag type papers (so long as they are coated, so photo papers only). The downside is that the ink cartridges are fairly small, and the printer runs a cleaning cycle if you don't print at least once every two weeks. The first set of inks will last me about one year, for about two A3 prints per month and various smaller prints. This is a very reasonable volume for me. Replacement ink sets run about €130.

You're asking about price per print, *including* the amortized cost of the printer. In the long run, ink and paper costs always dominate. Short term however, the price of the printer dominates. A more expensive printer, such as the Epson ET8550, will have very good long term cost, but the initial investment is steep. A less expensive printer, such as a Canon SELPHY, will have a modest initial price, but price per picture adds up much faster. The least expensive printer is Walgreen's, with no up-front cost, but high ongoing cost. A second consideration is quality. The more expensive the printer, the higher the print quality. The ET8550 will outperform Walgreens, producing richer colors and more detail. A professional printer such as the Canon Pro 1200, will be even better. The SELPHY does not match Walgreens. And then there's effort. Walgreens takes your JPEGs and prints them. SELPHY does, too. But a dedicated printer will require some fiddling with a computer to get good results. On the flip side, you get to play with various paper types and sizes. But make no mistake, this is extra effort. Personally, I went with a Canon Pro 200, which is roughly equivalent to the Epson ET8550, but cheaper to buy and more expensive to operate. It's all a matter of how much do you intend to print. I also have a much cheaper Epson XP8500, which prints better photos than the SELPHY, for less money, but can't match the Pro 200. I also have a SELPHY, which is nice for what it is, but can't match Walgreen. And I have an INSTAX printer, which fits in my pocket and prints adorable little polaroids. But quality can't match even the SELPHY. Depending on your needs, all of the mentioned printers are a good purchase. In your case, I'd probably recommend the Epson XP8800 as a cheap, good quality photo printer. You'll be able to buy six full ink replacements before you'll reach the cost of the ET8550, which should take several years. If you'd like to splurge, the ET8550 is definitely the better printer, with lower ink costs. And keep in mind that ink is only one part of the running costs. It's easy to get swept up in the marketing that an ecotank printer makes printing "free". But that's ignoring paper costs, which in my experience dominate printing costs in the long run. First party paper is reliable and good, but offers only limited variations. Third party paper requires matching printer profiles, which can be hard to come by for non-professional printers such as the XP8800 (but some paper manufacturers (Photospeed) profile for free, and there are cheap services for creating bespoke profiles).

Yes, it has made my photography hobby so much deeper. I bought a Canon Pro 200s 6 months ago and love printing and framing. Prints look so much better than on a display too. I also enjoy sending prints to family and friends. I'm really digging Canon Pro Luster 13"x19" and 8.5"x11". Never in a million years did I imagine modern photo printers could do what they do, it's impressive. Even little 4x6s are stunning, I always get compliments. I've always stuck with natural color grading and exposure, but recently been getting into curves. My challenge is to develop consistency for action shots, landscapes, and portraits when editing. I'm not gifted with these concepts so I spend of lot hours on my days off work just editing away and see what works. These are some prints I did today from a vacation back in May. Will be doing a 3x3 gallery. Not my best edits in post on a few, but I really like some of them. *

Just picked up a canon 200s on sale for 500 at best buy a few days ago. At that price or similar I am impressed, at full retail… maybe. But very happy. I know there are doubts about dye vs pigment but for most use cases I can’t imagine that being a problem. That said others in this thread are right. I have started buying different papers, metallic, gloss, etc. Which gets expensive quick. And the ink depletes fast when printing at 13x19 as I am finding out, particularly subjects like Astro with large swathes of single color….

Exactly as mentioned above; - CP1500 is perfect for 10x15 prints and it is cheap to run. approx 0.33€/print - G550 or G650 are a great option if you don’t want to deal with any cartridge printers as they both work work bottled ink - PRO-1100 seems overkill in this scenario, it prints up to A2 - PRO-200S or PRO-310 are better option as they give you more control over your prints with more colors to work with. Or if you find a PRO-300 on the cheap. Go for that. They are both cartridge printers. The cost of running is higher the a G650 but you do get better color reproduction. I hope this helps!

That model will consume inks like there is no tomorrow (ink cartridges and not liquid inks), besides there's always a risk when buying used printers. If you are okay with high ink costs and only & only if the printer has warranty left, go for it, else check for ink tank based printers.

I'm not from Europe, but 1 thing is universal, any "Cartridge" based printer will be cheap initially but will drain a lot of money in refills vs. an Ink Tank which shall be a bit pricey but super effective in the long run. Do check this video - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1B71C6BV7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1B71C6BV7k) (Not mine, but super helpful, was amazed that a fresh genuine ink cartridge runs out of ink even if you print blank, yep blank pages) You can check with companies like Brother, Epson, Canon based on which one provides the best after sales service, stick with ink tank based printers :) I'm using them (Epson earlier & now Canon) for the past 6-7 years and never had any issues, besides the ink cost and per page cost is also cheap! Had to switch from Epson as it didn't do borderless printing (Must have for me as I grew)

I enjoy shooting and then tweaking in Lightroom/Photoshop and then I print out the best from the session to show my wife and family. The real good ones I frame but not too often. And pictures of family and friends I hand out. Sometimes I do a few prints just to check out my post processing. So as your efforts progress you may be printing regularly. Canon has the SELPHY which is about $130. I have the Canon Pixma Pro 200 which cost about $600.

Honestly for quality prints I would either use printing services or increase budget for dedicated photo printer (not just a normal printer that "can" print photos) - like Canon pro-200

Get the lawyer a laser printer. For your photography, a dedicated A3+ photo printer is a beautiful thing. I used a Canon Pro-100 dye based printer for years. Great output. I think the pro-200 is its successor. Recently I jumped to the Pro-1100 17” pigment based printer. Excellent again plus even better, to my eye, on matte and art papers with the pigment inks. The Pro-300 also uses pigment inks but is cheaper being a 13” model.

I did not wait too long to get the 200 when I found it 50% off. It’s going so well, so very glad I jumped into printing. I love curating the paper type to the image and have been told through class work at CPW that I seem to have a knack for it. It has become my favorite part of the entire process outside of just getting out to shoot. My signature prints are 13 x 38 pano papers from Red River. Hand down, I think the 200 is a great entry level pro printer to get started.

To be technically “fine art” they need to be pigment based ink so avoid the dye based printers (dye printers also limit which fine art papers you can use). A Canon Pro-300 would be my first pick, up to A3+ in size. Longer for Panoramics. Beware that proper photo printers must be used often (weekly or more) to make it worthwhile - otherwise the routine maintenance required will use up a lot of ink. I have a Pro-200 which is okay but a dye based printer so I can’t call anything I print “fine art”. I don’t use it often enough unfortunately (won it as a prize for a local photo comp back in 2021)

Current Epson models are garbage. The nozzles are always clogged. I own three at my shop. HP consumer grade are garbage. Try to find the budget for a Canon pro-200.

You should have a close look at the Canon PIXMA PRO-200S. It's cartridge rather than tank, but the Canon PRO printers seem to be quite highly thought of by some of the YouTube photographers. 8 inks, rather than 6 with the tank printers people have been suggesting, so better/wider colour gamut. It will be more expensive per print, but that might be ok if you are going for high quality over high volume, if you can build that into your pricing. Borderless photo printing up to 13" x 19" (A3+). If you're a Canon photographer, it's certainly not a bad thing to have a Canon printer. It's a step down from the PRO, but I love the photo prints I get from my Canon EOS camera on my PIXMA TS9550.

Normally one of the 5/6-ink Canon PIXMAs would be my recommendation for high quality home photo printing, using only genuine Canon ink and high quality photo paper. Canon's own photo paper is excellent and works superbly with their ink, as you'd expect, but some people choose to go with a high end third party brand photo paper instead (Canon even sell some high end third party photo paper alongside their own). With a larger budget, one of Canon's PRO-series machines would be the next step up. The PIXMA PRO-200S is the prosumer/enthusiast model with 8 dye inks. The imagePROGRAF PRO-310 is the professional photographer's A3 machine with 10 pigment inks. The imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 is the professional photographer's A2 machine with 12 pigment inks. There are also large format imagePROGRAF PRO-series roll-fed machines from 24" to 60" width, but those would be beyond your budget and a long way beyond what you describe. You really need good pixels, and a lot of them, to get the best results printing on A3 or A2. I'm sure those machines would do excellent work with a high res photo from an exceptionally good phone, but they really need images from a Canon EOS camera (or a high spec Canon PowerShot), or something equally good, to get the best out of them and perform to their full potential. Now, in all honesty, a Canon PIXMA G500/600-series (A4), TS8700/8800-series (A4) or TS9500-series (A3) can do a superb job with a high quality image. Those are the 5/6-ink machines 1 step below the PRO-200S. I've got a Canon EOS camera and PIXMA TS9550, and the prints I get on A4 and A3 Canon photo paper are excellent. That could be all you need. Sure, the prints I would get from my EOS on a PRO-series would be a step closer to perfection, but I love what my PIXMA can do with a good image on good photo paper, and it was relatively affordable. If you don't already have a good enthusiast/pro level camera, I would spend that $1,500 on one of the Canon PIXMAs a step below the PRO machines and the remainder on a PowerShot or EOS R50/R10 starter kit (don't get the R100, it is still a good camera, but a generation behind on the image processor and kinda the no-frills model to entice people into the EOS ecosystem).

Also Canon PIXMA TS8750. A4 borderless, very much a photo machine, 6 ink. Individual cartridge-tanks, semi-permanent head. I.e. cheaper than the low end machines with combined cartridges because you replace inks individually and are not paying for a new head each time. Use XL cartridges for a much better cost per print. More expensive per print than the G600 bottle-tank, but that's not necessarily a huge issue if your volume is relatively low (the savings for bottle-tank machines really only become significant if you are printing high volume). It can still do excellent document printing, using the PGBK (pigment black). You'll get excellent results with genuine Canon photo paper, as the machines have profiles for it and you can tell them exactly what paper you are using. PT-101/PP-201 for glossy (pro/standard), LU-101/SG-201 for semi-gloss, MP-101 for matte. You can use third party art/photo paper, as long as it's not too thick, but the paper path isn't completely flat so really stiff paper could have feed issues. Or, breaking your budget, get the Canon PIXMA PRO-200S, which is the low end of their serious professional photo machines. 8 dye inks, A3+. Expensive to buy and run, but that's how it goes to get professional results. It's also better at handling thicker photo/art paper.

If the ability to print larger than A3 posters and banners appeals, have a look at the Canon imagePROGRAF TC-21/TC-21M. It's a 24" roll machine, so can do A1 & A2 or up to 24"-wide banners from the roll, and can additionally handle A3, A4, A5, A6 cut sheets. If you don't want to go as big as 24", have a look at the imagePROGRAF PRO-310 (A3) and PRO-1100 (A2) professional photo printers, or the PIXMA PRO-200S (A3) if you need to bring the price down. Paper weight is a complicated thing, as it's really the stiffness and thickness which matters. All of Canon's PIXMA printers will handle Canon's own photo paper up to 300 gsm, and their PRO-series photo printers will do slightly heavier stuff. Check the spec sheets for each model to get the specifics of what they say it can handle. The spec sheets tell you the maximum paper thickness that the machines will handle, which can be more important than the paper weight. In terms of photo paper quality, you might not really need to go above 300 gsm for business marketing. That gets you all the way up to Canon PT-101 Pro Platinum or LU-101 Luster paper from their professional grade papers. Their PRO-series machines will give you professional photo studio quality prints on their pro paper.

It's a tricky comparison because they are designed for different things. The PRO-200S is very much a pro level photo machine, but it's probably not the one a pro photographer would choose unless they were just starting out. The pro photographers would go for the PRO-310 and PRO-1100. The PRO-200S is a bit like the Canon EOS R50 or R10 camera with enthusiast grade lenses (rather than the L-series professional lenses and the higher models of EOS R cameras). In pro photography terms, it's more of a serious starter/enthusiast level machine. You don't have to use a Canon EOS to get good results with it, photos taken on a good Nikon or Sony (or others) will work equally well. Excellent photo printing is perhaps the most difficult type of printing, so it will naturally do an excellent job at document printing (but you wouldn't want it as just a document printer). For general business marketing, the photo quality on pro level Canon photo paper will be absolutely fantastic. It's also not really intended to be a high volume machine, although it's certainly quite capable and well built. It's a 2400 dpi machine. The ET-16150 is a business document printer, for high volume (by inkjet standards, but really high volume is still the domain of laser printers) business document printing. It will also, I assume, do a pretty good photo on Epson's photo paper, but nowhere near the professional level photo quality of the PRO series. The Canon equivalent would be something from their MAXIFY GX series. It will be cheaper to run than the PRO series. The ET-16150 is a 1200 dpi machine. The major difference between them is the PRO-200S is an 8 ink machine, for wider colour gamut and more accurate colour, and the ET-16150 is a standard 4 ink CMYK machine. One of the 6 ink Epson EcoTanks would produce higher quality photos. I guess it comes down to how important the photo quality is for you. If that's the most important thing, it probably should be the PRO-200S. If high volume business document printing is the most important thing (and things like big input trays for plain paper, duplex, etc), with just "good" photo quality, it probably should be the ET-16150 or a MAXIFY GX. If you really are going to be printing just an average of "An average of around 10 pages a day" (so roughly 200–300 pages per month, depending on how many days a week), that's not really high volume (the PRO-200S should be fine with that, and the ET-16150 has a recommended duty cycle of 3,300 pages per month so quite light use for it). On that low volume and some desire for excellent photos, I'm thinking the PRO-200S may be the better choice for you, as long as you don't mind it not having duplex (you can always do manual duplex, printing the odd numbered pages, then loading the paper back in to print the even numbered pages). If you later decide you want to print a high volume of something like leaflets or flyers, and you have gone for the PRO-200S, keep it for printing the good stuff and get an appropriately sized EcoTank, MAXIFY, or laser for the volume work. There is also the whole paper weight/thickness thing, so be sure not to forget to double check that on whatever you choose (the PRO-200S will handle anything from Canon's own photo paper range, and some others). Both Canon and Epson have been around for a very long time, I reckon both do very good printers. Personally, I prefer Canon, and part of my interest is photo printing, so I'm slightly biased towards them as a very highly respected photography company (they started out in 1933 as a precision optical instruments / camera company, and are used by a lot of serious pro photographers today). They are also well respected in printing from small to massive production machines. The results from my EOS camera on my PIXMA TS9550 are simply excellent.

I have the PRO-200 it is excellent overall, easy to maintain, cheap to run, outstanding at color photos, can make great black & white, but you have to experiment with it. It is slow to prints, as expected for a photo printer. For a photo printer it is better. The Epson ET8550 eco-tank can double as a regular printer, it is much faster, and insanely, like out of this world cheap per print, it is almost free. The PRO-200 still will actually do a better job at B&W text, but it is just so slow, like 2ppm if that that for documents, while the Epson says 15ppm, which is still not super fast compared to laser B&W printers, but manageable. SO they are kind of different in purpose, but I know they get compared.

I have not had any problems printing B/W with the pro 200. I've been quite happy with the pro 200.

I've been very satisfied with my Canon Pro 200S although the price has jumped a bit recently if you're in the US.

Canons are great for home printers, they are very unlikely to clog even when left alone for extended periods, and have better maintenance. Their Pixma PRO-200 is a strong option. Epson are really the only other brand I know pros to use, I have a 9890 from them a Canon tabletop, and have used a number of Canon and Epson printers, tabletop and self standing. They are on par in image quality (though Epson's own brand papers are better, to the degree I know people using Epson paper profiled for Canon printers). Canons can rarely get quite hard to shift clogs, but Epsons will clog more or less guaranteed after 48hr un-used. Epson clogs usually shift more easily. Epsons are more archival, but for your budget I suspect the paper, not the ink, is the limiting archivality factor. Colour rendition is near identical, certain small Epsons might have the edge in fineness of detail, but to really see that at even 13x19 size you'd need to be using a fairly high MP sensor.

Canon Pixma Pro 200 and Epson SureColor P700 are the go to options in that range. Both handle 13x19 prints and different paper types really well. Pick Canon if you want ease of use and Epson if you care more about archival quality.

I have a Canon Pro 200 and it is outstanding for photo quality. When I used to sell printers for a living the rule was Canon had the best image quality at the end of the day but used more ink to get there. Epson was great all-around. HP is what you buy when you don't know any better or there's a sale. Also, marketing is exactly that: marketing. Ignore all of it.

Yes. I use a Canon Pro 200 and print regularly. I have a pretty fair sized portfolio of A3+ sized prints. Nothing like pulling out and actually handling a good sized print of your work. It really is the completion of the photographic process. Some go on the walls, some just get pulled out and looked at once and awhile.

If it's just small ones for memories that would be fine (thing family photo album). If you want nicer quality or larger your better getting them printed somewhere or a much nicer printer. That obviously comes with my h larger expenses. To be clear though on nice printers the main expense is ink. I own a Cannon Pro 200 and regularly print on it and for me this is a hobby in and of itself. I enjoy regularly printing for myself or making nice prints as presents for friends and family. But I really would treat it as a separate hobby. If you just want a few snaps printed every now and then you financially much better paying for it to be printed it elsewhere.

Roller marks problem how to fix: Get better quality paper (also some printers if you select thick paper on configurations, also make it leave less roller marks, don't know if this is the case). Or Get a printer that is more focused for photos. (right now the cheapest are the canon G5/6XX series). If you don't find them, then the Epson ET8500/8550 (they do still leave some roller marks but with better quality paper they are fine). Or the epson ET 8100/18100 (it's ink does not have lightfastness). I only recommend ink tank printers for most uses cases. If you are going for pro level printing and going to sell them for high price then there are the Canon Pixma Pro Line, and Epson Surecolor p700/900. About your brother, well i don't recommend because it's a cartridge printer(seriously this black that you used could easily be like 3-5% of all of it's black ink). I would return if still possible. And purchase any ink tank.(If you won't print like 40+ documents pages or 5+ photos a month then it's a fine printer, more than this only if you convert it for ciss or use somekind of compatible cartridge). Edit: Ohh and about consumer level printer that you want mostly for documents, and then some photos. Canon Megatank GXXXX series. And Epson ET 2/4XXX series, then you will compare price and what they offer, like duplex, in case of epson a4 borderless as well. IF you want fewer features but better photos, some epson have 4 dye ink that are better for printing on cheaper glossy ink (you can check if their black tank is the same size as the colored tanks, if it is the same size then it's ink is dye).