I bought a Canon 7D from Adorama as a refurbished unit. I also purchased a two year warranty at the same time for not too much additional money. I had a problem with the camera after about 1 year (partly my fault, I think) and contacted Adorama about the issue. If I remember right it was a single phone call to remedy the situation. I sent the non-functional camera to Adorama (or their proxy, can't remember which) and received a new refurbished camera within two weeks total. The moral of the story, from my perspective, is that refurbished cameras are good values, but you should work with a reputable seller. I purchased a refurbished 6D the same way (with extended warranty)and have had no problems after nearly 3 years with that camera.

There is ACDSee Pro which I haven't used since I went to LR. It has many of the same features as LR.

Another thought ... Build a smart collection that only shows non-starred photos. You can select all of them with Ctrl A and then delete. You'll have to leave the collection to do the delete, but the selections will remain. This has the added advantage of a place to find all non-starred photos so that you can star ones that you might have missed in earlier passes through your photos.

You should be able to filter by all starred photos and select them all (Ctrl A on PC). Then remove the filter and go to the Edit menu and select Invert Selection. At this point only non-starred photos are selected. There are a few other ways to do this as well, but this is the first that came to my mind.

My suggestion is that you make use of collection in general and smart collections specifically. Where you put the pictures becomes less important when you make use of collections. I did not use collections when I started using LR (at V2), but after a number of years of struggling with different file folder structures, I finally settled on bringing all pictures into LR using a date based file folder structure. I use collections as a container for related pictures. This method does required diligent use of keywords, flags, ratings and colors. As for Raw vs jpeg, a smart collection can be used to separate the two in a collection set. Alternatively, you can set a filter (use the "\" key) to show only specific file types.

I experimented a bit with a fluorescent light at home and could demonstrate the flicker issue. It showed up as uneven yellowing in the horizontal direction when holding the camera in landscape mode. This was consistent with the examples I have seen online. When the Flicker Control was enabled the camera was able to deal with the the light flicker.

When I look at my shots posted above, I see something different. If it was flicker I would expect to see uneven yellowing across the picture from left to right or right to left (since these are in portrait orientation). The pictures appear to be consistent across the entire frame. If you look at the white stripes in the uniforms of the two girls, they appear to be the same color temperature for both girls in each frame, but different between the two pictures. The grey floor also appears to be a uniform color, but warmer in the second picture.

I have never (intentionally) used WB bracketing, but a quick review of what it does revealed that with WB bracketing, you get multiple version of each picture that are the same except for different WB applied to each version. In my case I was not getting different version of the same picture, so I don't think that was the reason.

I think that I will figure on shooting in Raw so that I can set the WB of all pictures to the same color temperature in Lightroom. I should be able to experiment a bit with Flicker control in the gym before the start of the completion.

Here are two back-to-back pictures that are representative of the two color temperatures that I was getting.

Based on some quick research I did based on TriX's comments, I found that flicker seems to result in uneven banded lighting that is somewhat random in where it occurs in the frame. In my case the color temperature variance was very consistent, either 3350K or 3800K. If it was flicker I would think that the color temperatures recorded by the raw files would vary somewhat based on the the flicker was affecting individual frames.

Thanks for that response. It makes a lot of sense. With the 7DMkII I have upped the iso and been shooting at a faster shutter speed which could help explain why I never really saw the situation with my older 7D (of course I don't remember looking at jpgs often). I have generally set a manual color balance (such as Cloudy) and shot a grey card then adjust my WB as a group in post using the grey card as a reference.

The anti-flicker setting was not engaged. I'll have to give that a try. The one thing that bothers me about the potential explanation is that it was just about every other picture even when I moved from one scene to another. You would think that at some point you would get two on the same temperature during a 200 picture series of pictures.

I shot a Colorguard competition in a gym this weekend. I set a custom white balance before starting using an Expodisc. I have shot in this gym numerous times before so I was fairly familiar with the gym and its lighting. I shot in manual and AI Servo focus mode. I was shooting both Raw and jpg files on separate cards. So here was the problem: About every other jpg picture was a different color temperature than the previous picture. I went to the raw files and confirmed that about half of the pictures were at 3350K and the other half were at 3800K. So basically the camera would record a picture at 3250K then the next would be at 3800K and the third back to 3350K. I think this was one of the first times that I have checked the jpgs if I shot them at all. I have generally done a color adjustment all raw pics at the same time so I haven't seen it before.

Anyone have any idea why the custom white balance would bounce back and forth between two color temperatures?

While in this case I could easily go to the raws and adjust the WB to the 3800K (with I preferred), I would like to figure out the issue. I have a weekend long Colorguard competition to shoot where I will be shooting 40 teams with about 150-200 shots per team, so raws add up to a lot of disk space quickly. Also, in burst mode I have to be careful of not filling the buffer and missing shots when in raw.

You might want to look for proof books from the various companies.

Something to note about file deletion on Dropbox. You can go to the DB web interface and restore recently deleted items from the trash. Useful if you inadvertently delete a file.

Try contacting Tim at www.Yongnuousa.net. He can help you make the right contacts at least. He also offers some additional servies for Yongnuo equipment purchased through his site.

Were Smart Previews already prepared in LR? If not, writing the Smart Previews required for LR Mobile might be going on in the background slowing the process of syncing down.

It's definitely a fungus. I can't give you an identification as to genus/species since I am a bacteriologist, not a mycologist.