Canon PRO-300 printer Q&A - using the 13" A3+ pigment ink photo printer

hi my name is keith cooper and in this video i'm going to have a look and address some questions relating to the canon pro 300 printer this is the pro 300 13 inch pigment ink based printer now i've got a video a review of it um and there are quite a few specific reviews looking at aspects of using it such as with canvas or panoramic size prints custom print sizes and things like that so i'm not really going to address a great deal of the operation of the printer here because i've got that in detail elsewhere this is more to address some questions that i've been asked in the year or so since i first reviewed it and also a few observations on its use and things that may hopefully be of use to people either thinking of getting a 300 or perhaps with some issues with their 300 or just just curious anyway i'll start off with ink use um it's relatively frugal in its ink use it hasn't used up lots of ink i don't do the sort of printing repetitive printing of just one image that you can use to get an idea of true print costs i'm afraid there are some websites and uh you know that have looked at this in more detail and will give you an idea of the cost per print at a certain size now those uh observations there they're based on testing say like 100 prints and how much ink is left and things so they're a good guide they're a good relative guide between printers but don't use them too religiously for trying to work out profit margins if you're selling prints you probably want to look into it a bit further than that in particular on your replacement inks which ones you're getting now in terms of ink use uh the ones that have been in my usage of the printer that have been used up the slowest have been the magenta that's the full strength magenta and the red now this is the web interface here and it's showing both the magenta and red um pretty low there they're ones that i've only replaced once i think so far since getting the printer all the other inks have been replaced several times um personally i find that the gray the blacks depending on what type of printing or papers i'm using and the color optimizer the clear coat ink in this sprinter they tend to run out faster they're the ones that i expect to go first but what i would say is that all the inks will over time obviously run out there's there are no inks in this which aren't used much now that's a good sign because it shows that all the different inks are being used in creating the mix that goes on the paper um and once again it depends on your prints if you do a lot of black and white prints then you'll not be surprised to know if they're glossy prints that or even on the lustre paper you not be surprised to know that the black the gray and the color optimizer go down faster because they're the inks that are predominantly used in those prints now there are some other inks used as well the light colors are used up but really it depends on what you're going to print which is not exactly surprising in terms of usage a lot of people say how often must i use my printer well i like to use a printer like this at least every other week even if it is just on plain paper to print a nozzle check now the nozzle checks um it will exercise all the it will exercise all the heads it will do a print uses very little ink um run that through every couple of weeks if you're not using the printer for some reason um i would say that in the course of testing for various reasons well partly because i had so many printers here and i wasn't going out taking photos quite so much um i didn't use this for a month um absolutely no problem whatsoever past the nozzle check first time but i would note that if your inks are low and when you start the printer up if you've not used it for a while i wouldn't recommend leaving it for a month between prints but it was no problem with this one here what i would say is that it does some additional cleaning testing when it starts up if it hasn't been used for a while so you may well find that in switching a printer on that you've not used for a while any inks that were showing as low drop down a level to the need replacing level now they may not need immediately replacing it's something i've noticed that certainly when the the red warning comes on and says all you need to replace you can probably get another print out of it i don't take it any more than that because it will at a certain point go no not going to do anything you need to replace that ink and printers like this that use thermal ink heads for the for the printhead technology really do not like being run with no inks in it's a great way to damage printers so i know it goes against the grain not to make sure every tank is absolutely squeezed dry of its last drop of ink but when the printer says change inks change inks it's worth it for the reliability of the printer because remember ink in inkjet printers has several roles one of which is to print one of which is to keep the mechanism running and that's um yeah that's just to keep it clear and the other one is as a general purpose working fluid lubricant now people don't like thinking i think all my ink should go onto the print no inkjet printers and that's all of them from every manufacturer and no matter what technology they use they use the ink as part of the process of keeping the the printer in good nick um i suppose it's one reason why people like the idea of ink tank printers uh there is the illusion that you have far more ink and that it's not being wasted well it's not being wasted because it keeps your printer going it's part of how printers are designed it's how they work um it's a question i've had for years and years and the answer is the same ink gets used up but i do notice if you've not used this for a while it'll do it also does a thing about agitating the ink tanks it'll just tell you that and you can hear it and you can feel the printer moving it really is just moving the head backwards and forwards and it is agitating the inks that's their pigment inks they don't settle very quickly but if you don't use them very often there will be a slight tendency towards some settling that's it's not a problem next up uh what i've had about paper feeds um almost always i try and use this top feed here i find the feed at the back is just that little bit more fiddly to use now it's good for some thicker media and do pay attention when you decide on your media type some media types do force you to use the rear slot rather than this top slot here certainly all the good quality papers i put through i've had no problem putting through here one or two thicker papers i've put through the back but you'll see that when you're checking the various settings and that essentially nearly all my prints have gone in through the top here paper feed is excellent on these printers i've never had any jams i've never had any problems with it have a look at some of the other videos where i look at things like canvas long prints using custom sizes printing cards all kinds of stuff like that i've tried lots of different things on this but when it comes down to it this is a very nice photo printer um there are one or two things that i'd look for in a you know in a larger version of it but then that's the pro thousands and whatever may be coming at some point to replace the pro thousands you know you get more functions in bigger printers but this one is pretty good quite happy using this for all kinds of prints it's a pigment ink print printer which means i'm quite happy with the black and white in particular works very well anyway as for printing itself i use a mix of either printing directly from photoshop or using the canon print layout software now you can either use that as a standalone app or you can use it as a plugin for photoshop or lightroom now if you're using lightroom i personally dislike the software intensely never have liked it but you can use the canon print plugin you can install it and plug and lightroom will hand over the printing to the plugin similarly with photoshop i mean one of the reasons i've used photoshop for 25 years now since when it very first came out i'm just very familiar with photoshop so just because i like photoshop and dislike lightroom doesn't mean i won't still recommend lightroom to at least have a go with for people to see if it suits what you want to do but that's that now i've got on the screen here this is connected up this is wirelessly connected works works fine not had any problems with connectivity with this all when it was in my office where it was plugged into ethernet works just fine i would notice that if you change the interface certainly on the max you'll need to create a new printer instance that's a printer in your print list the changing of the network address doesn't seem to be handled that smoothly in some aspects one other thing if you're using a mac make sure you don't accidentally select the airprint driver for it i've covered this in the setup information and the review as well but if you suddenly find that a whole load of your print settings does not mac disappear or don't seem to be where you think they should be make sure you haven't accidentally set the printer up using airprint airprint may well have its uses uh the technology itself is interesting um but at the moment uh it just causes grief for a lot of people but yeah you can get around it but make sure you use the proper printer driver for it now i mentioned before the remote interface here this is the web page for the printer here and it's showing here just the ink levels one of things i have noticed is that there are some settings buried away well they're not that buried yeah they're fairly obviously placed but they're buried away in the printer menu here then they're not replicated on the web interface in particular some of the more detailed paper related ones now i've done a print out here um and it's printed out details of all the registered paper types or media types for the printer here and it's got their basic settings now the thing i noticed on it is that you can set things like paper paper thickness you can create custom ones for these as well um i've covered that in the review i've also got a specific article looking at what's called the media configuration tool and that's piece of software from canon that allows you to create custom media types now that can be useful it is not difficult to use it's just relatively advanced stuff you may not need it if you know what it does then you probably may well have a use for it but if you're wondering what's he on about then you needn't worry about it the normal media types will work fine but these have things like extension setting the extension for borderless printing so if you find for a particular media type that the extension and that's the image expansion to create a borderless prince if you find that is just a bit too much you can change it or you can increase it if need be likewise detect paper width now there's a setting here and on here that says ignore paper width settings i've found that yes that does work but sometimes the papers seem to override it now i've not done this enough to check exactly where it is but i do know that if you're getting problems with setting paper widths if a custom paper size isn't that first check you're using the right slot check you're using the accurate measurement for the paper the width if you're if you've cut a sheet to size and then go into the details for the media setting and see what settings are being applied here now you can actually have to set this so that it does um you know it will do print a bit and then it will wait a bit so if you have if you've got a paper that you're finding is not drying properly well my first thought would be it's probably not the right sort of paper for this printer but you can let it dry for longer so if you're printing on glossy film for example for alternative processes to make digital negatives look at the media settings and how you might adjust them to suit that now i don't use glossy film for for that sort of work i don't do any wet chemistry photography anymore but i know it is popular and this is a pigment ink printer will work on film you may just want to set your custom settings though a bit of tweaking to get the best results from it so following on from using the monitor at the media configuration tool the mct some paper suppliers are starting to provide i think it's am1x files which are combination media settings and a profile by all means install them use the mct to install them your printer driver in the computer will need to find out what's actually in the printer because if i have two printers and they have different media configurations of them the software that you're using to drive the printer needs to know what the configurations are available in each printer so there is a bit of sort of going around having to update up the update things on the printer then update things on you and your computer but i've covered that in the articles in looking at it now i would say some of my more technical articles are not available as videos i've been writing articles for nearly 20 years i've been making videos since well actually the first proper video i did was the review of this in august 2020 i look at that and that dates it that's uh i can see that that's one of my first videos so i would say that if you find some of the stuff there have a look at the written articles as well because i come from a background where my choice is writing an article first making a video second um my videos i know people find them useful so i'm trying to do more of them but do remember that you know my preferent natural preferences are for written articles especially for complex stuff that with lots of tables lots of data in it i really don't find that comes across well on a video but you know hopefully the videos are of some help one last bit i will go back to on this in terms of print quality and settings i found that the medium so the standard settings or slightly better than that settings are good for most printing for some black and white and this is a black and white this is done on a canon gloss paper and it comes up very nicely it's some ripples in sand on a beach in northumberland for some papers it's worth experimenting with the precise settings as you might tend to get a little bit of bronzing now that's where colors appear on black and white prints at certain lighting angles now there is absolutely nothing on this this one is pretty good quality it's um that's black and white now it's on a very glossy paper i don't normally print much on very glossy papers but on some papers i have noticed some third-party papers that on some media settings you get a little bit of bronzing now you might think you could adjust the co setting the color optimizer setting that does make a difference but in general remember that you pick the paper after you've selected the printer because not every paper behaves exactly the same way on a printer so you might have two printers that superficially are fairly similar you think but you run the stuff through and you find different papers but it behave different ways it's why i test things it's why i have all my test images which are referenced in the articles and things anyway that's a quick recap of things i've noted about the pro 300 whilst i've been using it great printer i particularly like it for black and white it's a pigment ink and i i always said if you want good black and white pigment inks these colors and there's always a perception of a slight color tint in many black and white pictures they're pretty constant with viewing light so this is led lighting a little bit of daylight coming in i've got tungsten lighting still in some parts of the house and they do make a difference on it on some printers obvious difference on this very difficult to see but once again does depend on selecting the right papers so well there you go if you've got any more questions please feel free to ask them in the comments i'll put in the description for the video some of the links to the articles and some of the other videos but if you look in the canon printer playlist you'll find stuff for the printer anyway thank you very much oh and please do subscribe to the channel if you find it useful i always forget to ask that thank you

Channel: Keith Cooper

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Id: 0Uih4nndn1U

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021