All-in-one Printers for Photographers

Canon Pixma MG8250 £299

The PIXMA MG8250 is currently Canon’s
top-of-the-range multifunction printer. Features include print, copy
and scan with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, auto duplex, direct disc print, 35mm film
scanning, direct print from camera via PictBridge or memory card, an
8.8cm TFT screen with Intelligent Touch System and Pixma Cloud Link.

The
MG8250 has an impressive touch-sensitive surface. When you power the
printer up, a series of lights magically appears on the top surface,
with a central operations control panel to navigate through the flip-up
8.8cm TFT display. The display is very clear and easy to navigate. You
can, in fact, be scanning and printing without having to wade through
the on-screen manual.

The MG8250 uses individual ChromaLife 100
ink tanks, so you only need to replace the colour that has been
depleted. Although six inks are fitted, only three tanks – cyan, yellow
and magenta – contain colour. The other three are photo black, grey and
black (for text printing).

A rear media holder is used for
photo-quality papers and will support Canon special media up to 300gsm.
We printed our A4 test file using Canon Photo Paper Pro and Canon Matte
Photo Paper, which took 1min 57secs. The print has rendered all the
colours accurately, although they are bordering on oversaturated. The
cotton reels have a 3D feel and have kept all the detail in the thread,
especially on the white reel. The baby’s skin looks slightly hot, which
is probably due to too much magenta. The gradients display a very smooth
transition from white to solid colour, which will be due to the 1pl
(picolitre) drop size and Canon’s FINE print head technology. The colour
patches display clean colours, although the blue has turned to navy
blue, as has the blue cotton reel. The black & white image under
daylight viewing is totally cast free, but under artificial light (room
lighting) there is a magenta cast. This effect is due to metamerism,
whereby colours can change according to the ambient lighting conditions.
I wouldn’t have expected to see this so pronounced on a printer with a
dedicated grey ink.

The colours of the Canon Pixma MG8250 are well rendered, althoughthey are a little too close to being oversaturated

The
text on white is well controlled, but the white text on black is
starting to break up, which is noticeable on the base of ‘u’ and tops of
‘n’ & ‘m’ letters. Although you may not be printing white text on
black, it does indicate that the print head is not coping well with fine
detail.

The scanner can deal with photos, a 35mm film strip or four mounted slides at a maximum resolution of 4800dpi.

For
photo scans, there is very little user control at the scanning stage
other than setting the resolution and file type of PDF, JPEG or TIFF.
There is a limited editing facility within the Canon Navigator EX
application, which includes brightness, contrast, sharpness and so on,
and an advanced option for tone and colour correction. The scan quality
is first class and can be further tweaked in any image-editing
application. The film-scanning option was very good, but you would need
to apply Unsharp Mask to the scans to bring out the detail.

The
overall build quality and design of the MG8250 is excellent. While it is
not the smallest printer in this test, it is certainly the most well
made.

Facts & Figures

Score: ★
★
★
★



★

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