Canon S800 Color Bubble Jet photo printer
September 2001
Expect Photo Quality From This Desktop Printer
by Tatyana Sinioukov
Only good things could be said about a desktop printer that produces photo-quality output fast and without a glitch. The Canon S800 Color Bubble Jet photo printer uses a six-color printing system to print an 8˝ x 10˝ in approximately two minutes and a 4˝ x 6˝ in one minute, at 2,400 x 1,200 resolution for both color and black. With six colors, the S800 thus can produce really vibrant prints.
Canon also said that the six-color inks were designed to produce long-lasting color that does not fade for up to 25 years when the image is printed with Canon Photo Paper Pro and preserved in a frame and under glass. The six inks come in the individual ink tanks, a system called Canon Think Tank. Because each color has its own tank, they can be replaced one by one, when the color runs out, instead of replacing the whole cartridge.
The printer also incorporates Canon's Advanced MicroFine Droplet technology to achieve maximum detail, a built-in Photo Optimizer Pro for color accuracy and Image Optimizer to smooth jagged edges. It's designed to reproduce up to 49 gradation levels to optimize skin tones, sharpness and contrast.
The printer was easy to set up: all it required was putting the ink tanks into the printhead holder and loading some software. There are only two buttons, On/Off and Resume printing, plus a power light and a lever with two position options to adjust paper thickness.
I used Canon Photo Paper Pro, a 4˝ x 6˝ perforated paper, as well as Kodak Ultima 8 1/2˝ x 11˝ high-gloss picture paper to test the S800's printing abilities. The results were bright, mostly color-accurate prints of digital images, with smooth edges and optimum quality (I say "optimum" because I printed some low-res digital images taken for Web only, and didn't expect excellent quality). It was equally easy to print them directly from the iMac's hard drive and to download them first from a Compact Flash memory card, since the printer comes with a ZiO! Compact Flash card reader that supports both Mac and PC.
The printer offers four print modes: text, graphic (for text and color), photo and manual. The manual mode is used for advanced printing: you can in-crease quality output, adjust brightness, color balance and saturation, and add "special effects" such as sepia and other colors, and the "illustration" effect. Although it was satisfying to optimize image quality by adjusting color and brightness, I would have liked more "special effects" to be available.
by Tatyana Sinioukov
Only good things could be said about a desktop printer that produces photo-quality output fast and without a glitch. The Canon S800 Color Bubble Jet photo printer uses a six-color printing system to print an 8˝ x 10˝ in approximately two minutes and a 4˝ x 6˝ in one minute, at 2,400 x 1,200 resolution for both color and black. With six colors, the S800 thus can produce really vibrant prints.
Canon also said that the six-color inks were designed to produce long-lasting color that does not fade for up to 25 years when the image is printed with Canon Photo Paper Pro and preserved in a frame and under glass. The six inks come in the individual ink tanks, a system called Canon Think Tank. Because each color has its own tank, they can be replaced one by one, when the color runs out, instead of replacing the whole cartridge.
The printer also incorporates Canon's Advanced MicroFine Droplet technology to achieve maximum detail, a built-in Photo Optimizer Pro for color accuracy and Image Optimizer to smooth jagged edges. It's designed to reproduce up to 49 gradation levels to optimize skin tones, sharpness and contrast.
The printer was easy to set up: all it required was putting the ink tanks into the printhead holder and loading some software. There are only two buttons, On/Off and Resume printing, plus a power light and a lever with two position options to adjust paper thickness.
I used Canon Photo Paper Pro, a 4˝ x 6˝ perforated paper, as well as Kodak Ultima 8 1/2˝ x 11˝ high-gloss picture paper to test the S800's printing abilities. The results were bright, mostly color-accurate prints of digital images, with smooth edges and optimum quality (I say "optimum" because I printed some low-res digital images taken for Web only, and didn't expect excellent quality). It was equally easy to print them directly from the iMac's hard drive and to download them first from a Compact Flash memory card, since the printer comes with a ZiO! Compact Flash card reader that supports both Mac and PC.
The printer offers four print modes: text, graphic (for text and color), photo and manual. The manual mode is used for advanced printing: you can in-crease quality output, adjust brightness, color balance and saturation, and add "special effects" such as sepia and other colors, and the "illustration" effect. Although it was satisfying to optimize image quality by adjusting color and brightness, I would have liked more "special effects" to be available.
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