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Details at a glance
Max 9600 x 2400 dpi
Max paper size: A4
Ink: 5 tanks
Dimensions: 468x467x263mm
Weight: 12.8kg
Scanner
Copier
Fax
We clicked with
Huge range of features, great print quality, CD printing
Shots in the dark
Redness in prints using supplied profiles, not great at shadow areas
Links
More Canon information
www.canon.co.uk
Price Comparison:
Canon Pixma MP530
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The Pixma MP530 is a “multi function” printer - it prints, it scans, it copies, it faxes. Duplex printing, two paper trays, CD printing and borderless printing too, auto feed scanner and colour copier - and all for about 220 quid.
Appearance and features
It's all my own fault - when I reviewed the Pixma 4200 I said that I really didn't know what else a printer manufacturer could put into an entry level printer. Well, the MP530 does a ridiculous amount of things.
First though the appearance - it's huge. Ready to go with all the flaps open the Pixma 530 takes up about 4 square feet of desk. That's not too surprising when you consider all the features but it's a lot. On the plus side it will save you finding space for a separate printer, scanner and fax machine. It also weighs about 13 kilos so you'd best put it on a proper desk not a side table.
Just the basic features would run to a couple of pages - it does everything a Pixma 4200 does plus a scanner plus a fax machine. Note that I focused on the photography features rather than looking in depth at the office ones. I looked briefly at the copying facilities but never got as far as the fax. I'd imagine that it's a decent enough fax machine but really wouldn't know how to test it.
The Pixma MP530 will do a lot of things without a computer attached. There are buttons for scan, copy and fax along with lots of buttons that let you set the print quality and modes. Of course the scan button won't work without a computer attached but if it is attached it starts up the supplied scanner software. You can also attach a camera via a Pict Bridge cable. I tried a few camera in this and a Canon A620 and a Nikon D2x both worked well. Curiously the Sony Alpha 100 didn't work - the printer reported it as an “incompatible camera” which is strange because it is supposed to be PictBridge compliant.
Scanning
This works quite well either via the continuous feeder or using the glass flatbed platen. Scan quality is respectable at 600 dpi and I had no problem scanning printed pages and magazine articles. The printer is bundled with OmniPage SE and this does an adequate job of OCR,
Scanning photos was relatively good. The images captured onto my computer were nicely exposed and with a decent amount of detail. It isn't going to challenge one of the high end dedicated scanners but is absolutely fine for digitising printed media.
There is also a batch scan facility - you can drop a whole stack of pages in the document feeder and have it scan them each in turn. This is a nice feature but unfortunately from a digital photography point of view isn't great. I really hoped that I would be able to drop a stack of 6X4 prints into the feeder and have the machine scan them all. This would be a fantastic time saver for anyone needing to scan a batch of prints - maybe so that they can digitise their film pictures for archiving. Unfortunately the minimum document size is 5.8X5.8 inches. 6X4s go in but they slide around and bits are missed of the scan.
Scanning an A4 photo took about 1m 30s at 600 dpi and produced a 100MB tiff file.
Printing
This is where is starts getting interesting. Printers on all in ones used to be rather poor but my testing of the MP530 has shown it to be at least as good as a budget stand alone photo printer - for some applications it's rather better. If this sounds disappointing then remember just how good budget photo printers are getting now! With a little care the MP530 will certainly give you inkjets good enough to put on your wall.
I tested the Canon Pixma MP530 using Canon Photo Paper Pro Super High Gloss - there's a pack included with the printer. When I installed the printer it gave me several “canned” ICC profiles. These should allow a decent level of colour accuracy. Unfortunately, there are no clues which one to use for which paper type. I checked the net and found that “PR” profiles are for gloss pro photo paper so I tried PR1, PR2 and PR3. All of them were very similar and all gave a slight red colour cast to the prints. I used a printer test chart and skin tones were obviously too red. Elsewhere on the page everything had a fraction too much red. It's not too bad for most subjects but skin tones look too red for all ethnic groups. To make sure it was the profile at fault, I calibrated the printer myself using Monaco EZColour and got beautiful neatral prints. Once calibrated the Pixma MP530 gives lovely colour reproduction but it's a step I wouldn't expect to take and one that most home users won't have the equipment to do.
Other than that, prints were very nice indeed. As with most entry level printers the dark areas block up and this will probably rule this printer out for you if you want to do lots of black and white prints. On the 20 step Kodak Grey Scale the prints are black from about step 16 - 20. This is slightly worse than a printer like the Pixma 4200 where 17 - 20 are black but acceptable for normal printing.
An A4 photo takes about 2 minutes to print with a borderless print taking 2m 40s.
Where the MP530 easily beats entry level dedicated photo printers is in the text quality. This is excellent with crisp sharp blacks and no hint of jaggies on any normal printing. For black text printing it rivals the office lasers. Speed is pretty good too - I printed a 10 page Word document in 1 minute 30 seconds.
Copying
I'm not really going to talk too much about copying - imagine scanning something and then printing it and you've pretty well got it covered. Copying some photographs tended to print them a little darker than I expected. It wasn't a big deal but they didn't look identical. If this happens with yours then experiment with the “intensity” setting - in auto mode some pictures with a wide tonal range get darkened.
Double sided copying is quite cool - it takes single sided documents and prints them double sided (sheet 1 on the front, sheet 2 on the back) which is nice for saving paper.
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If you want an all in one that can produce great photos then the Pixma MP530 is a good choice. However, you will need to watch skin tones if you use the supplied profiles. For printing it performs about as well as the bargain Pixma 4200 and scanning is on a par with a scanner such as the Canoscan LiDE 60. Together these would cost you about £130 so you need to decide if the extra features, the convenience of using one device and the fax machine are worth £100 to you.
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