First Shots with A720 IS

[ClamBake]

After reading lots of informative and helpful posts, I ordered my A720 IS ($170) and Canon housing ($165) from B&H. They had both in stock and three days later they arrived. Paired them with the Sealife 961D strobe I received over the holidays and headed to Playa Del Carmen. I am relatively new to UW photography but followed some baswic tips here regarding ISO setting (80), white balance (set manually using the A720's programmable button and a white slate at depth) and "tried" to dial in my strobe for automatic. The Sealife strobe was the most frustrating as the "automatic" setting tended to burn out the images. Playing around with the dial settings, I found that between 3 and 4 usually got something acceptable to feed into Photoshop Elements.

I ran my images through "Auto Smart Fix" and manages to get a few that were OK. Here are four of the better ones from two days of diving off Playa (Tortouga Reef, Tarpon Reef, Moc Che Deep and Moc Che Shallow) with Jason at Scuba Diving, Fishing, Dive Packages, and Extreme Sports in Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Riviera Maya, Yucatan, Mexico and Caribbean and Dos Ojos Cenote with Klaus from Playa Scuba Dive Center * Centro de Buceo * Tauchbase - Playa del Carmen, Mexico

I am very interested in taking a class for both digital photography and Photoshop Elements, and would appreciate any recommendations on instructional books/CDs/DVD as well.

Thanks in advance for advice and comments.