Thanks for the comments, and I wish I could help you with some answers, but what I can tell you probably won't help much. Please see this post regarding my trials and tribulations to get these pictures.
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=90230
You are right that my flash did not go off in a couple of these pictures. Why it didn't is beyond me. For example, I have a professional video that was taken during a shark dive in Bora Bora. In the video you can see my flash going off. However, when I later looked at all of the pictures, it was obvious that something happened because some of the pictures were black. I worked on them and brought out what I could, but it wasn't pretty.
I'll try to give you a run down on the 9 photos posted.
1. Yellow Tang; this is a portion of a much larger picture of a group of Yelllow Tangs, but he was by far the best. The flash worked on this picture.
2. Whitemouth Moray; the flash did not go off on this picture and the photo had to be enhanced to bring him out.
3. Teardrop Butterfly; this was taken in shallow water, using natural light.
4. Masked Bannerfish; this was originally a photo taken using RAW that came out mostly black due to the flash not firing.
5. Moorish Idol; taken if fairly shallow water and the flash worked. There is almost no enhancement to this picture.
6. Rangiroa Reef; this was originally a photo taken in RAW and was very dark, like the flash did not fire. Photoshop CS was used to enhance this photo and #4 to bring them out of the darkness.
7. Napoleon Wrasse; this photo was taken at such a distance that the flash was a moot point. This fish is about 6 feet long and is huge. Some enhancement was done to bring out his green color. I love this guy.
8. Divided Flatworm; this photo is basically as is except for some cropping. The flash was working well this day after I seemed to resolve the problems with it not firing.
9. Hawiian Dascyllus; no flash intended here. The details of the fish were unimportant. I wanted the blue/black look with the diver in the background. This shot is one of my favorites. I got what I wanted here.
I don't know why my flash was firing sometimes and not others. On land I had trouble getting setting right to make it work all of the time. When I finally did I had one day of diving left. The only thing I can think of is that I changed the settings during the dive and the camera didn't like it.
Denny
