Watch video: DCW Unwrapped
The holiday season is here! For those who celebrate it, Christmas is just around the corner – and as is our tradition here on Digital Camera World, we mark the occasion with DCW Unwrapped.
This is where we unwrap some early photography, videography or image-making Christmas presents. It's a fun way for us to share some great gift recommendations – including gifts for yourself, if you're lucky enough to get some "paper presents" in your Christmas card!
Of course, you don't have to be a Christmas person to enjoy a gift for the holidays. So regardless of what kind of meaning this season holds for you, we'd love to invite you to share in the joy of unwrapping and unboxing a few fun photo presents with us in the run-up to the big day.
It may even give you some inspiration for gifts you can give during other seasons and occasions, whether it's a birthday, a graduation or a tradition like Eid. Or again, you may just be inspired to pick something up for yourself!
Today's present is the amazing Canon Pixma Pro 200 – a real powerhouse printer that prints all the way up to A3 and A3+.
At first glance it has a lot in common with the Canon ImageProGraf Pro 300, another A3 and A3+ printer that's one of the best I’ve ever used. They share the same external chassis, too, but they employ different printing technology on the inside.
The Pixma Pro 200 takes advantage of dye-based ink, and packs 8 separate color cartridges: black, grey, light grey, cyan, magenta, photo cyan and photo magenta, and yellow. Canon is world-renowned for its ink technology, and its top dye-based inks have a fade resistance rating of ten years.
As you can see from these prints, the quality really is right up there with the more expensive ImageProGraf Pro 300 – especially when using glossy paper, which is where dye-based ink really shines.
I’ve printed a whole selection of different images from moody monos to punchy portraits, with super-saturated colors and understated subtle tones alike. And everything about these prints just screams quality: the blacks are deep and dark and rich, skin tones are soft and true to life, and even the most psychedelic colors are rendered every bit as bold as they were on my screen.
One of the features of the new ink system in the Pixma Pro-200 is the enhanced color gamut in reds, blues and blacks, and that’s really born out by these prints it’s produced for me.
I mentioned that it prints all the way up to A3 plus, but more than that it offers borderless printing all the way up to A3 plus. And it prints at great speed, too, which is one of the bonuses of the dye-ink technology as it’s dry to the touch as soon as the photos hit the tray.
Away from the prints themselves, the Pixma Pro 200 features a 3-inch color screen that walks you through the setup process, lets you know when cartridges are running low, and helps you quickly connect via LAN or WiFi. It also flags up if there’s a mismatch between the kind of paper you’ve loaded, and the paper that your computer thinks you’ve loaded, and Auto Skew Correction even makes alignment adjustments for you.
The Canon Pixma Pro 200 really does offer premium, powerhouse print quality at a price that pretty much makes this the best bang-for-buck printer on the market. I can’t wait to print off even more of my favorite photos!
