Canon I9900 Digital Photo Inkjet Printer

I bought a Canon i9900 for home use because I was looking for a great photo printer to compliment a new 10.2 megapixel Nikon camera. I found a new i9900 on sale and it does a fine job. Borderless prints look great but that only works automatically on specific sizes. Sometimes cropping, stretching or squeezing images is necessary. The canon pro photo paper works very well. The paper has to be loaded on the right side of the movable guide otherwise you get paper jams. Large format paper is expensive but the results are great. I don't have enough wall space for all the great prints I have made in just a couple of days playing with this printer.

There are 8 ink cartidges (about CAN$18 each in Toronto). This mitigates runnig low on one color in a multi-color cartdidge but I found it is not easy to buy all of the ink colors, at least not all from the same place. I have a color ink replacement kit but it does not have 4 of the special color inks used by this printer. Unlike some other inkjet printers, this printer has a (replaceable) print head. The color cartrides do not have print heads. That saves on the price of ink cartidges. I am not sure if that will cause operating life concerns.

I have a wireless network at home and wanted to make this a wireless network printer. I managed to do that using a Linksys 802.11g print server (which cost about CAN$130 extra). Now any of my 2 Windows XP PCs or my Win2000 laptop can print great color images wirelessly. The printer supports USB 2.0 under Windows or Firewire under MAC OS. The Linksys print server only works one way so while you can print, you cannot tell the printer status. I believe D-Link offers a bi-directional print server capability but it is only documented to works on certain HP printers.

The only visual feedback on the printer for diagnostics is a single light that flashes green or yellow (maybe red too??) and you need to read the manual to figure out the flashing codes. I only needed this when trying to get everything working in the beginning. The factory sealed printer comes with a quick start guide. The full manual is on disk, with the Win/Mac drivers.

The printer seems very fast. The resolution is high in both the horizontal and vertical axis. It has a neat automatic power shut down and remote start up function which should be a great power saver.

This printer does not print on CDs or DVDs, nor does it read memory cards of any kind but it is supposed to be Pictbridge(tm) compatible for direct connection to certain cameras. However, I cannot think of any reason to print directly from a digital camera to this high quality printer. Anyone serious enough to buy this printer will probably want to first post-process their images in Photoshop(tm), or whatever image manipulation software, before making hard copies. Printing blind from the camera could make costly mistakes.

There may be better photo printers out there but this is a good one for reasons discussed above. If you can get it for a decent price I would recommend it.

Sincerely,
pmanuel_ca

Excellent printer, I have used the 6 color Canons for years and liked them. The 8 color Canon i9900 is nothing short of fantastic. I decided on the i9900 because it uses ink tanks that are not "chipped" so can be refilled if one wanted.

My previous Canon S900 & S9000 six color printers were not capable of printing full bleed edge to edge prints. I was expecting borderless printing on 13"X19" Photo Paper to be stunning. I was unprepaired for the difference the vivid eight color printing, and the borderless 13"X19" printing would make. These large photograpic images are nothing less than fantastic.

I bought two i9900 printers using eBay. One was brand new in an unopened box and is really fantastic in print quality. I intend to use this printer only with genuine Canon ink in order to insure maxiumum print life for those photographic images I really care about displaying.

The other was apparently well used and needed some adjustment as the print head was dragging on the paper mostly from center to end of travel, making odd noises as it traveled across the paper and leaving marks in the surface of photo paper. After height adjustments were made to the guide bar, that printer also prints acceptably and is fine for proofing and general use. The color quality on this printer is fine however the print quality is simply not the same as the new printer. The prints sometimes are not as clean on this printer with little ink marks in places. I intend to use after-market ink in this second printer. I may also refill ink tanks myself or I will install a continuous ink system so that I can use the printer for color posters etc.

I highly recommend the Canon i9900 8 color printer. The color is stunning and the use of ink tanks that can be refilled is a plus over the current model being sold at this time (current model has "ink-out" chips on ink tanks).

I shoot for Federal Law Enforcement and the Air National Guard; I have managed a large format service bureau in my civilian job. I have printed on many, many different output devices to include Durst Lambda, Encad IJ, Roland HiFi Jet, Laser printers, Fuji Pictrography, Dye-sublimation devices, plus many more. I say all of this to validate my comments that follow...

The bottom line is the i9900 blows all of them away! This includes an Epson 9600, 7600 and 4000 all of which I use for the Feds and military. The only downfall is the lack of "Archival" inks. I lamented between the Epson 2200, and the i9900. I DO NOT regret one minute the i9900 decision! It is absolutely gorgeous! I shoot a Canon 20D for my personal work, that coupled with the i9900 makes unreal images/prints, these prints blow the minds of all of my peers! They cannot believe the quality. It works with Epson, Konica/Minolta, and Red River papers perfectly. The Canon i9900 on Red River Paper is a perfect match, with no "bronzing", like the Epson pigmented inks.

As far as the noise aspect I cannot tell that the printer is actually working until I see the paper moving, it is that quiet!

Downfalls would be the paper path not being a straight feed path, and the inks not being archival. The paper path has not presented a problem as of yet, I have put very heavy card stock & art paper through it with ZERO hang-ups!

Although with the archival aspect I think that in 8-10 years when these prints are expected to fade, I will have been through several printers and the technology will be untouchable and I will just reprint them as needed. As far as selling the prints, well it will give me an opportunity to resell prints in the future...maybe. I will see down the road if they actually fade.

I hope that this has helped you make the right decision...the i9900!

I'm in the printing business and in my quest of finding a perfect inkjet printer, I found this Canon i9900. I bought this printer for our business 4 years ago at a full price. I was so impressed then and even more at present. I'm so amazed at the quality of the photographic color prints as well as the high density black it produces on a clear film for silkscreen printing. Even with the third party inks, the color is excellent. You cannot tell the difference. The maintenance is not time consuming compared to other name brand printers I've tried before. With the removable printhead, you don't have to replace the whole printer when it goes bad. We already have 4 in our workplace, but I am still buying more of this printer here on Ebay at a lot lower price, to replace all other ones we have left. We rely on the consistency and high quality prints that this printer produces to keep us in business. This is the best printer so far, that I have ever tried.

I cannot think of anything I don't like about this printer, except for one thing . . . it's now a discontinued model, which I could never understand. Why discontinue such a reliable and excellent product?

I bought this printer for large format photo printing and am very impressed with the speed and colors. I do dance photography as a hobby and wanted to print poster-sized photos of my work for display. I have two other Canon printers and the larger the photo I print, the more impressive the image looks. If there is only one downside, it would be the ink consumption for this printer, but that may be the case for all large format photo printers. I just make sure I have a supply of Canon ink at hand. I highly recommend this printer!