Canon’s PIXMA MP960 – copier, scanner and seven ink tanks for lab-quality photo prints

It’s not all that long ago that printing colour photography in the home required a dedicated room with a truckload of gear and chemicals – clearly the domain of the well-heeled prosumer. We had cause to reflect just how far things had come in the last decade when we saw Canon’s new flagship PIXMA MP960 Photo All-In-One – it prints seven colours (six colours for lab-quality photos and one pigment black for razor sharp documents) at 9600dpi and can print a borderless 4 x 6-inch photo lab quality photo in roughly 35 seconds. But wait, there’s more – it also offers copier and scanning capabilities. Not only does it scan flat sheets at 4800 dpi, it comes with a Film Adaptor Unit that scans up to 12 negatives and eight mounted slides at a time and it also prints on CD/DVDs. As a copier it can copy 30 b/w pages per minute and 22 pages per minute in four, whoops, seven colours. Use it with a Canon digital SLR, and you get what they call the Canon-to-Canon Direct Advantage and print directly from the camera to the printer without the need for a PC. It’ll even print a contact sheet with up to 35 images all directly from the camera controls without a PC. The price? US$400

As a printer

Print high-definition photos and documents at 9600 x 2400dpi and up to 30 pages per minute with Canon’s FINE print-head technology. The PIXMA MP960’s print head delivers microscopic, one-picolitre ink droplets with amazing precision to produce stunning photos.

The PIXMA MP960 also offers a variety of direct-print options, including Card Direct, which allows users to print photos from any compatible memory cards or mobile phones. Further edit and enhance images using a variety of functions, including: Face Brightener, Noise Reduction, Vivid Photo and Red Eye correction.

The PIXMA MP960 allows users to print out favourite images in a variety of layouts including stickers, as well as print directly onto CDs and DVDs. Creating beautiful photo albums is easy thanks to the convenient automatic duplex unit, which allows for quick and easy double-sided printing.

As a copier

The PIXMA MP960 features Canon’s new ‘Dual Gamut Colour Processing Technology’, faithfully producing photo reprints; plain paper copies and second generation copies, so that it appears to the eye as close as the original. This printer also eliminates the ‘see-through’ effect caused by photocopying double-sided pages thanks to its Auto Exposure function. Copy speed is impressive, producing up to 30 copies per minute (cpm) in black, or 22 cpm in colour.

As a scanner

Scan images at up to 4800 x 4800dpi using CCD technology to deliver optimum quality when saving photos or document scans digitally. The aspheric ST (Super-Toric) lens system for reduced light distortion allows for high-resolution scanning. The PIXMA MP960 also has a convenient scan-to-PDF feature, allowing scanning of images or documents directly into a PDF format- ideal for quickly creating email attachments or archiving your documents.