K5 / *istDs ... green button vs. ae-l

Hej,

now that I have a K5 (swoon) there's one thing that I know will bug me a little, coming from the *istDs (that I want to hold onto as a secondary body; potentially converted to an IR camera, eventually): The green button difference.

I use a number of manual lenses. On the *istDs pressing the ae-l button spot meters through the manual lens, much as the green button does on the K5. I'd rather would prefer the K5 to use the ae-l button for that, too. With the *istDs I can leave the thumb resting fairly much at the same place and operate both the back dial and that button at the same time; on the K5 I have to reposition it vertically. Is there any way to re-program / adjust the ae-l button in the K5's menu that I've missed in the menu? [Not least 'cause the slightly different dimensions of the K5 means my thumb now is much closer to my right eye which isn't uncomfortable but a bit awkward for now; I am a left eyed photographer - absolutely can't close the left one without closing the right one ]

-Mnemon

I don't think so. You soon get used to the different button layout with regular use so just have a good long play with it, which shouldn't be hard

I think the DS and DL using the AE-L button for this was essentially a work-around for the fact that those models don't have a green button, so no I don't think you can emulate this behaviour on the models which do.

Oh yes, I'll get used to it, of course. My thumb really hurt holding the K5 for a while when I first got it. Clicked through the first 380 odd photos (deleted a number of duds so no clear count) yesterday on an assignment and was fine and pain free then.

[I think the slightly smaller grip of the *istDs will always feel a bit nicer to me - I am titchy ].

It'd be nice to be able to do this, though. One for the wishlist then: Give me a camera where I can re-assign each and every single button to 'delete' . Seriously: I think that'd be a rather wonderful feature and not that hard to realise. Display a schematic of the camera on the screen where you can click through all the buttons with the selection wheel and re-assign them as you want to. If they go a bit further there could even be a simple 'if - then' relationship [if in af mode button does this, if in mf mode button does that] that shouldn't take that much processing power to run through. Even more advanced - tie different button setups to various user modes so that you could have one setup for, say, macro photography, another for low-light, and yet another for studio portraits. Priority of camera adjustments changes a little with all of these and grouping the most important ones where they are most ergonomically suitable for me, personally, would be nice.

Good thing to tick on the marketing / advertising list, too - but likely would require a complete re-think (and re-write) of how the firmware is programmed.