Great at photos (Canon S 520)

Member Name: plodder

Product:	Canon S 520
Date:	01/11/02 (1888 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Speed, print qaulity, ease of use

Disadvantages: picture quality varies with paper

I bought the S520 mostly to print photos and some other fun stuff for the kids. I read some reviews form users in the States who were pleased and so took the plunge. It was easy to install onto Windows ME. I got a USB 1.1 cable from B&Q for £1.90 and it works fine. I had heard horror stories of photos taking ages to print but this printer is reputed to be fast and it is, even though I wanted quality rather than speed the speed is a nice bonus. A normal sized photo (4x6 inches) takes around 30 seconds at good resolution.

The resolution is up to 2400x1200. It claims standard printing of 12 ppm and 6ppm for back and colour respectivly. I suspect these are over estimates, though it will be faster than similar quality printers at this price. It will print 8.5 inch borderless if you want big prints. The printer measures 16.9x11.6x7 inches and weights 5kg.

The printer has4 ink cartridges: magenta, cyan, yellow and black which are easy to install. The printer software also installs easily. I bought various grades of paper to play with and quickly learnt that if you want photos the grade of paper makes a huge difference. Also you have to make sure that in the printer you check the right grade in the printer dialogue box before you print. I tried cheating by using cheap paper and telling the printer it was good quality. The result was worse than just telling the truth. On quality paper the results are just like a real photos from a good film camera. In other words thesoftware provided is cleverer thanIi am and I do what it says everything works fine.

You can use the printer software to correct for any imperfections in the image you want to print, maybe the picture was not bright enough, but most digital cameras come with software that will edit thephoto before you print which is better as you can see theresults before you print.

It will take 100 sheets of standard paper, transfers, cards, envelopes, though I have only tried paper so far fr
om standard to high quality glossy for photos.

The instructions provided are extensive and easy to use. They reccomend using Canon paper but I have used others finding any good quality gives good quality results. The quality of the paper matters most and claimed compatibility with Canon. Claimed pages per cartridge vary from 300 per yellow cartridge to 690 for black. Cartridge prices vary, if you shop around by on the internet I can pick up all 4 for around £20. (7days.com seem good for cartridges and paper).

In summary I am very pleased as I wanted quality results without too much effort. I was a little suprised at how much quality varied with papers but others with other printers say the same. Maybe worth trying a few different sorts of paper to get what you want as rpcies vary from a few pence to £1 (7days do good photo paper 20p per A4 sheet), but if you want photos go for the best. For everyday use standard paper is fine.

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