5D3 Rate button

[NaturaLight]

It would be REALLY helpful, Canon, it this otherwise useless button (like the Print button on the original 5D) was made programmable.

[PhilDrinkwater]

It will be useful for some photographers - for example studio photographers going through pictures on set.

However I agree that it's not going to be mainstream

[Viggo]

Well, it is programmable and I've set it to one of the most important functions, for me, namely Protect-button.

How come there isn't a single camera with an UNDO option in the menues for when you delete something you shouldn't have??

[swampler]

I actually like the rate button. I take lots of shots at sporting events for the newspaper and it works great for marking those shots that you know you want to send in.

[keithfullermusic]

I have a 50D and I always wanted a rate button.  When you are taking tons of pics at an event it's nice to rate them on the spot to speed up your editing process.

Do the ratings transfer into Aperture?  Otherwise, I think it would be useless.

[swampler]

I have a 50D and I always wanted a rate button.  When you are taking tons of pics at an event it's nice to rate them on the spot to speed up your editing process.

Do the ratings transfer into Aperture?  Otherwise, I think it would be useless.

They show up in LR, so I would assume they show up in aperture as well.

[roumin]

+1 for making it programmable to access any menu item

[jaayres20]

I love the rate button. I use it at weddings to pick out my favorites throuought the day and then use the copy image feature to copy only my rated pictures to a new folder on the second card. I then copy those to my laptop and run a same day slideshow at the reception. I lay out a few buidness cards and everyone gathers around to see the pictures from the day. It books me weddings and makes me money. Doing the same thing before the rate button used to take me over an hour now it takes me ten minutes. Great feature.

[dr croubie]

How come there isn't a single camera with an UNDO option in the menues for when you delete something you shouldn't have??

Firstly, if you don't know how filesystems work, imagine a book with a table of contents, 'deleting' a file on a CF just deletes the entry in the Contents page, the photo is still available in the book, the camera just doesn't know where it is. Once you take another photo, it can overwrite the photo, or part of it.
Compare to Win/Mac "recycle bin", when you 'delete' something, it doesn't delete the page or the table of contents, it changes the table of contents to say the photo is sitting in the 'recycle bin' (until you empty the bin, then it's the same as above).

So, when you delete something accidentally and want to 'undo' that delete, the camera would have to have a sort of 'recycle bin', and your card wouldn't empty for new shots until you empty that too. Personally, I never delete in-camera unless it's a really ballsed up shot, pure black, pure white, or i'm out of space. And if i delete something when i'm out of space (and then empty the recycle bin, if there were one, to free up the space), then take a new shot, it's probably overwritten that photo anyway so there can be no 'undoing'.

Basically, just don't delete in-camera unless you really really are out of space. And if you're regularly running out of space, sorry, but just buy more cards, $50 is a case of beer or another 8gb of space, your choice.

If you really really really mess up and delete something accidentally, there's another option, don't shoot any more on that card, just swap to an empty card, and use a 'file recovery tool' (something that can find the pages of photos without the table of contents) on your computer when you get home. But then, if you've got a spare card, why are you deleting in camera?

[wickidwombat]

+1 for making it programmable to access any menu item

I would love to be able to reprogram it to a bracketing button alla the 1D series
hold it down move the wheel while held and bam bracketing is set

as it is having to enable bracketting via the menu is still a PITA

[epiem]

I love the rate button. I use it at weddings to pick out my favorites throuought the day and then use the copy image feature to copy only my rated pictures to a new folder on the second card. I then copy those to my laptop and run a same day slideshow at the reception. I lay out a few buidness cards and everyone gathers around to see the pictures from the day. It books me weddings and makes me money. Doing the same thing before the rate button used to take me over an hour now it takes me ten minutes. Great feature.

THIS is a great idea!

[pwp]

It would be REALLY helpful, Canon, it this otherwise useless button (like the Print button on the original 5D) was made programmable.

Yes that 5D print button was a waste of space. You'd think Canon would learn. The Rate button will be handy for a handful of shooters and it's a completely valid option. But it needs to be fully customizable with Rate just being one of the choices.

Like the 5D Print button, it's just another feature dot point for the Canon marketing team. A baffling design choice, an easily bumped irritation to the great majority of 5D3 shooters.

It's feature spam.

Paul Wright

[kbmelb]

I too love the Rate Button. I do a lot of head shots on location and often with many different people. So I like to let the folks view their shots on the LCD and when they pick the one they like I just mark it with the rate button instead of having to write down numbers. When I import all the photos in Aperture, it recognizes the rating then sorts them by the it and I save time with my sorting and editing.

[the-ninth]

I love it as well!

I shoot a lot when traveling and travel without any computer. Until now I could only delete unnecessary pictures and I was always thinking it'd be nice to rate while still on the road.

I did not expected it but was very happy when I read about that feature in the 5D3 announcement.

Cheers, Robert

[PhilDrinkwater]

I love the rate button. I use it at weddings to pick out my favorites throuought the day and then use the copy image feature to copy only my rated pictures to a new folder on the second card. I then copy those to my laptop and run a same day slideshow at the reception. I lay out a few buidness cards and everyone gathers around to see the pictures from the day. It books me weddings and makes me money. Doing the same thing before the rate button used to take me over an hour now it takes me ten minutes. Great feature.

Was interested in this.

Is there an option to copy across only the rated images or something? If there is, I couldn't find it in the manual...

Thanks!