What's the reality of a canon prograf pro 1000

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jhg100

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James
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Keen photographer and love printing on my very old canon PIXMA MG5450. Been looking at the canon pro 100s and similar. Budget around £500.

Now, I have the opportunity to get a pro1000 nicely within this budget even with buying a load of the inks which I'll need to spend about £300 on within a few months at a guess. Seen a print and looks perfect. Never been too worried about secondhand gambles.

My worry is, will it become a chore when it's supposed to be a hobby? I won't use the A2 that often. I'm not going to sell prints. I do have the space. I'm not too worried about £5 a print as a worst case. I do woodworking as a hobby too so thinking of making frames for them. That means glass so extra hassle.

After spending crazy money on my 70-200 f2.8 GM it seems such a waste making amateur A4 prints. I want A3 and stone real A2 peices of art. Is the thinking man's game getting professional prints? Or so long as I keep to at least a print a week a great hobby in the making?
 
I have a Pro 1000, there are some pro's and con's

Pro's

Print Quality is excellent
Paper Handling is excellent
Will also handle thick paper from the vertical feeds, so you don't need much space behind the printer (less than my previous Pro-100

Con's

It's ink hungry especially with cleaning/charging cycles if you don't use the printer often - if you print regularly this is less of an issue
Genuine Inks are expensive
Its heavy!!
 
What does using it often entail? Does 1 print a week minimise cleaning/maintainance Cycles? I could keep that as a minimum. Being honest with myself, it's not going to be every other day so could that be pointless with something this high end?
 
jhg100 said:
What does using it often entail? Does 1 print a week minimise cleaning/maintainance Cycles? I could keep that as a minimum. Being honest with myself, it's not going to be every other day so could that be pointless with something this high end?
Click to expand...

I'm a sporadic printer, I have bouts where I print a lot and then periods where I don't print at all. Folklore suggests a couple of prints a week is enough to keep charging/cleaning cycles to a mimimum, but generally its a printer that likes to print.

I forgive the ink usage everytime I get a print off it :)

I would also recommend using Canon Print Studio Pro to do the actual printing, the soft proofing in this seems better than the Adobe offerings, I have set up PSP as a plug in to Lightroom.
 
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Incredible, thank you. I think this is pretty reassuring. I'm going to give fate a small chance as I'm away for a week and if it's available when I'm back, I'm on it!

I use lightroom 5 for soft proofing currently as I'm all in with DxO Photolab 9 and it doesn't have my old printer as an option but was planning to move to DxO. I'll definitely look at the canon software as I did like the look of the hard proofing photo page where they print 10-20 different small versions in a sheet. Thanks so much!
 
jhg100 said:
Incredible, thank you. I think this is pretty reassuring. I'm going to give fate a small chance as I'm away for a week and if it's available when I'm back, I'm on it!

I use lightroom 5 for soft proofing currently as I'm all in with DxO Photolab 9 and it doesn't have my old printer as an option but was planning to move to DxO. I'll definitely look at the canon software as I did like the look of the hard proofing photo page where they print 10-20 different small versions in a sheet. Thanks so much!
Click to expand...

And I don't know what your preferred paper is, but to start with I'd recommend using one of the Canon Papers and their own profiles
 
jhg100 said:
My worry is, will it become a chore when it's supposed to be a hobby? I won't use the A2 that often. I
Click to expand...

This is entirely down to you.

I had a Canon Pro10S for about 10 years. I would print in bursts. The ink costs were high. The printer was irritating. But the results were excellent and satisfying.

So the downside is cost and time. The priner is also physcally large and requires working space so can consume space in a small office.

In addition to the ink you have cost of paper. This can vary. If you stick with some basic paper types and sizes you will have a basic overhead and ink costs will probably dominate.

I found over time that with a Canon pigment ink printer I was drawn to more expensive papers. I found that in addition to maintaining a stock of spare cartridges I was keeping boxes of A4, A3, and some A3+ fine art papers which at £3 to £5 per sheet were higher than the value of the spare ink.

Even if you are not selling prints it is reassuring to know that if you give them away or pay to mount them for hanging on your own wall that the longevity is not a practical concern.
 
I can get my head around the cost, it was more about whether they needed more than weekly attention to stop print heads clogging etc. It sounds like as long as I'm sensible and don't totally neglect it, we'll do ok. I've got a 2 year old daughter as well, so being forced to print portraits of her won't be a bad thing either.
 
A bit relevant maybe.
When I had an epson printer where the heads needed constant use to prevent clogging I ensured that weekly I printed a saved document on A6 plain paper which had text in lots of different colours. It did not use too much ink and did prevent clogging.
 
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