 New S820 is more affordable and is first Canon Exif Print printer
It’s been on sale in the US for several months, but the Canon S820 photo printer is now set for UK availability. It’s also the first Canon printer to be supplied with Exif Print (Exif 2.2) support as standard. Exif Print is development comparable to Epson’s Print Image Matching (PIM) innovation introduced last year. Exif Print for industry wide camera/printer smartnessExif is an industry agreed standard that has been widely implemented by digital camera manufacturers for several years. Exif sees information about how a photo was taken stored in the headers of digital camera pictures. Following the example set by PIMWith Epson’s PIM initiative, camera image file header information has been tailored to Epson photo printers that support PIM. These printers can interpret the data held in PIM-supported camera images more smartly and so print theoretically better looking photos. PIM has been supported widely by camera makers, including Epson, Nikon, Olympus, Kyocera, Casio, Sony and others. But PIM is an Epson standard that was never likely to be adopted by rival printer manufacturers, including Canon, HP and Kodak. These three also make cameras that are not PIM compatible. The compromise is Exif Print. This is version 2.2 of the Exif standard, with PIM-like extensions. Practically all consumer cameras will support Exif 2.2 sooner or later and the signs are that the printer industry is following suit. Canon is introducting Exif Print support with the S820 and upgrades are being made available for other Canon printers. It’s a similar story for Canon printers. HP, too, is committed to supporting Exif 2.2 in printers and cameras and the most recent Kodak consumer digicams are already Exif 2.2 compliant. Epson tooEpson is also embracing Exif 2.2, but not at the expense of PIM. Indeed, Epson is refining and enhancing PIM in the form of PIM2. It goes well beyond the goals set by PIM MkI and Exif Print. Canon’s S820 describedThe S820, not to be confused with the memory card reader-equipped S820D, is a more affordable alternative to the ultra-fast S900 (reviewed - click here). It has similar print quality and printring speed as the S820D, but has a simpler feature set. Overall performance of the S820 is comparable to the S820D and the discontinued S800. All feature related 1536 nozzle 1200dpi print heads capable of delivering 4pl ink droplets and have a maximum print resolution of 1200x2400dpi. They are also able to print high quality setting A4 photos in just over 2 minutes. That’s about half as fast as the incredibly fast S900, but comfortably faster than most other rivals. All share the same BCI-6 single ink tank system. One improvement over the S800 that both the S820 and S820D boast (along with the S900) is borderless printing at 6x4inch and A4 sizes. With the S900 replacing the old S800 at about the same premium price point of £330, Canon has moved the S820 down to a much more affordable £219 inc.VAT. | 
