Canon CP-10: A fun photo printer for most occasions

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): So you went to that big family gathering. Everybody was there, the food was great, the atmosphere friendly.

You came with your newest and most sophisticated digital camera. You took picture after picture. Those were moments not to be missed, as so many relatives and family friends were present.

Then you hooked up your digital camera to the large-screen TV set in the living room. You called everybody to gather as you were going to start your slide show. People liked your shots, and they each asked for a print. You were left dumb-struck. "You have such an advanced camera, you should be able to get the pictures printed for us with no problem," they said.

What could you do? You could hurry and attach your camera to a PC or a Mac, download the pictures and print them out with an inkjet printer. But not everybody has an inkjet printer capable of printing photos.

Besides, the process would take some time. Or you could promise everybody that you would e-mail each one of them a copy of the images. But, then again, not everybody has an e-mail address. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a printer that could print out any number of copies of a picture with photo quality? You could distribute the photo prints right there and then and at the end of the party everybody would go home with a set of photos in their wallet to keep their nice memory of the gathering alive.

Enter the CP

Last week, Datascrip, Canon's distributor for Indonesia, once again introduced an interesting gadget for the local market to accompany their digital cameras. The Canon CP-10 printer, which is almost the size of a Discman and looks even more like one, was launched.

Portable photo printers are not really new. Acer, Sony and others have been marketing their own photo printers for some time. Sony is going to launch new photo printers for consumers - SV88 and SV77 - in Japan in July and August, the rest of the world will follow soon. Epson also plans to launch its camera- specific photo printer, Stylus Photo 785EPX, some time soon.

The CP-10, however, looks different and prints differently. I especially liked the bluish exterior made of a translucent plastic material. Too bad it still cannot run on batteries, because, otherwise, unlike most of the other photo printers, this very small device (108x57x125mm) would have been truly portable. The small printer still requires a power adaptor, although it has no power or start button on it, though there is an optional car power adaptor.

The reason this printer cannot rely on batteries is actually very simple. Unlike the Epson 785EPX, which is an inkjet printer, Canon's CP-10 is a dye-sublimation type of printer. Dye-sub requires a lot of heating. The color dyes with 256 levels of gradation and each have to be warmed before they are diffused on the specially coated paper. Because the technique of putting the colors on the paper is different, the image is very sharp, the colors are vibrant and the print result is simply stunning, even though the resolution is only 300 DPI.

This printer only makes photo prints the size of your credit card, with or without white borders. That is the reason Canon calls it a "Photo Card printer". A package of blank photo paper, which also includes the dye supplies, consists of 36 pieces and costs Rp 130,000. You can also buy a package of 18 stickers for this printer (Rp 130,000) that are guaranteed to make the kids happy.

How does it work? This printer supports only Canon digital cameras with direct print mode. All you would have to do is connect the camera to the printer using the provided USB cable and use the onscreen menu to tell the printer to begin printing the pictures that you have selected.

The entire printing process, which involves four stages, takes only one minute. During the first three stages, the printer lays a layer of yellow, cyan and magenta dyes on the paper. During the last stage, a special protective coating is applied on the paper to protect the dyes.

The downsides

As mentioned before, this portable printer can only print credit card-sized photos. This could actually be its strongest point, however. The dye-sublimation printing method is costly. Canon Singapore's Web site states that the printing cost is less than US$0.60 a piece. The technology itself is much more expensive than inkjet, although the results are better. A large dye-sub printer would also cost a lot more than a comparable inkjet printer. Besides, we would have to wait much longer if the print size were larger and waiting simply reduces the fun. Therefore, the decision to limit the size of the printer was a sensible one, supposing that Canon had intended to make this printer a consumer good.

Unlike other non-portable photo printers, the CP-10 does not allow us to edit the pictures in any way. However, judging from the results shown during the demonstration, as long as the pictures have been taken with a properly set digital camera, the results will not disappoint us.

Another downside is that this printer can only work with three of Canon's full line of digital cameras. It works with Digital Ixus 300, the latest version of the ultra-compact, credit card- sized Ixus digital camera, the new entry-level PowerShot A10 and Powershot A20. It will not work with my PowerShot A50, unfortunately. The printer is not equipped with a flash memory card reader, either.

However, the small size and the quality of the print result really make this Rp 2.8 million photo printer a must if you happen to have any of the upcoming digital cameras from Canon. There is simply so much to like about it. (zatni@cbn.net.id)