Doug Kerr
Well-known member
It's been popular to make fun of the "Direct Print" feature (and the blue-glowable button that goes with it) on recent EOS cameras (as is true for onboard flash, P mode, automatic transmissions on sports carts, and the horseless carriage). I never paid a lot of attention to the feature,, since once I got a camera that supports it (now, my 40D) I didn't have a printer that did.
But we now have an Epson Stylus Photo R1900 (my God, is it big!), with a nice PictBridge USB port on the front, with the little double-slurp PictBridge logo staring me in the navel all day.
So I thought I would try the feature out.
It is really neat! For one thing, It worked right away. I plugged a USB cable into the 40D and the R1900. Next time I pushed the image review button on the 40D, there was a little doodad in the upper left corner of the screen letting me know that Direct Print was ready to go.
The menu system is well organized and easy to follow. Evidently, much of the work is done in the printer, and apparently different printers support different features, and advise the camera of what they support, since my setup does not have some menu items illustrated in the 40D manual.
You can easily crop the image before printing. Evidently, with some setups (not mine - maybe with a Canon printer) you can even rotate the crop frame.
Incidentally, you never need to touch the accursed blue-glowable button at all. (Yes, yes, I know, so it could just as easily have been made reassignable.)
I think it can be a really handy way to run prints when we have visitors and so forth. We may in fact invest in some 4x6" (or such) paper for the purpose.
So those of you who have the feature at both ends should probably give it a spin and see how it works. You don't need to tell anybody! And we know you leave the transmission in your Passat or Maxima in "automatic" anyway.
But we now have an Epson Stylus Photo R1900 (my God, is it big!), with a nice PictBridge USB port on the front, with the little double-slurp PictBridge logo staring me in the navel all day.
So I thought I would try the feature out.
It is really neat! For one thing, It worked right away. I plugged a USB cable into the 40D and the R1900. Next time I pushed the image review button on the 40D, there was a little doodad in the upper left corner of the screen letting me know that Direct Print was ready to go.
The menu system is well organized and easy to follow. Evidently, much of the work is done in the printer, and apparently different printers support different features, and advise the camera of what they support, since my setup does not have some menu items illustrated in the 40D manual.
You can easily crop the image before printing. Evidently, with some setups (not mine - maybe with a Canon printer) you can even rotate the crop frame.
Incidentally, you never need to touch the accursed blue-glowable button at all. (Yes, yes, I know, so it could just as easily have been made reassignable.)
I think it can be a really handy way to run prints when we have visitors and so forth. We may in fact invest in some 4x6" (or such) paper for the purpose.
So those of you who have the feature at both ends should probably give it a spin and see how it works. You don't need to tell anybody! And we know you leave the transmission in your Passat or Maxima in "automatic" anyway.