One person you may want to talk to is Paul (Aquawookie on the boards) and his associate, Nick, who offer private courses. He's been diving for almost 30 years. Paul's very patient and really enjoys talking about a lot of the details about the physics and everything else. He's had experience working at dive shops, mixing gas, working with all sorts of different equipment and seems to really know his stuff. I'm a relatively uncoordinated engineer who asks lots of annoying questions pertaining to physics and chemistry- particularly stuff that begins with "why" and "how", and Paul and Nick were great instructors for me. (They also have/had careers in engineering.)
I'm not sure there's a one-size-fits-all instructor, and I think a lot of folks here will tell you that PanAqua and a number of the dive shops around here are good, too. I've heard good things about Dave with Indian Valley Scuba who also teaches out at Dutch Springs, and it would be hard to go wrong with one of the other instructors associated with the folks in DNY. You've gotta figure out what works for you. I paid a little more for Paul than I would have paid for a group course at PanAqua, but for someone like me who likes to ask a lot of questions ranging from stuff like the thermodynamics of air fills to "What do I do if my buddy is unconscious and I have a decompression obligation?", it was worth every penny.
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Disclaimer: I've taken a couple of courses and had three different instructors (Paul, Nick, and this guy who did my checkout dives in Florida), but I only have a little over fifteen dives under my belt. If you want to find out more about Paul, good folks to talk to who have a lot more experience than me- both as divers and learning from Paul- would probably include Chris (CJM on the boards) and Rich (dbuggy, I think), who are part of the DNY crew. Or you can just search for "Aquawookie" on the boards and get the whole gamut of reviews. Shop around, interview your instructors (See Walter's link), and figure out who would be best.
