>It’s a peculiar truth that, as inkjet printers go upmarket, they’re provided with fewer bells and whistles.

I'm all for that and I'd be happier with this printer if it didn't do CDs nor had PictBridge. Anybody who buys this will be solely interested in it as a dedicated medium format photo printer. As far as I'm concerned the unnecessary bells and whistles just add complexity and are another thing that might go wrong.

I wish manufacturers would learn that more isn't always better.

My Pixma IP1500 is still going strong gets lugged around dogs shows, is god awful cheap to

refill and can be CISS'd quite easily. For a A3+ machine Canon used to be the only game

in town as others Epson et.al required hardware hacks to enable a CISS system to defeat the

cart chips. Canon were the only manuf at the time who did nto chip carts.

Now they have jointhe the unrefillable bandwagon and have included features on their latest

printers to ensure exisiting CISS systems will no longer work.

IMHO a large printer like with without (the possibility of) a CISS is simply not cost effective.

You didn't mention (or I didn't notice it) anything about the 16-bit rather than 8-bit printing this device is capable of which will give better tone rendition. DSLRs are generally 14-bit so there's a fair bit being downsampled/lost to print in 8-bit

You didn't make any mention of the type of ink this printer uses. It still uses dye ink, which is susceptible to fading from exposure to ozone and is not water proof. The state of the art in ink technology is pigment ink. The PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II features a pigment ink set and would be a much better choice for serious photographers.