Undertow

red gel and velcro.

good stuff for your first time, especially #3. Generally water really sucks the contrast from the light so if you're aiming for a landscape-style shot i'd say keep it sunny. There are plenty of situations where cloudy is better, but not yours methinks. Light will be too flat.

As far as midday vs late sun, both can be great depending on how you shoot (midday isn't too harsh as often true topside). I'd say do both, get there midday and stay for the later light, especially if its remote. Play with the shadows later in the day. Exposure can be tough but experiment, the D7000 has good dynamic range. Try going into the shadows and shooting out to the light, exposing for the light to get that frame-within-a-frame idea that you're 3rd photo above kinda does.

Shoot with the sun, shoot against the sun. Play with snell's window like in your 1st pic (angle at which you can see through the surface to the sky/trees above). Shoot reflections like the 3rd pic. Try more over/unders like the 2nd. Experiment. Then post your results. A great start though. Cheers,

Chris

i virtually never let anyone touch my housing. After a dive, I lift it onto the swim platform, giving the crew the obligatory "no thank you, I'll take care of it". Get out, grab camera, dunk, find the safest spot on boat for it. On a dive trip, I make it very clear the first day I'm the only one that handles my housing, unless absolutely necessary, like chuckin seas or a raised deck. Even then I hand them the camera such that the handle's the clear thing to grab, and only have them to hold it while I get out. I've seen too many screw-ups and spent too much money to risk otherwise.

It amazes me when I see people hand off their cameras from the water and just go get cozy on the boat. Then I look into the rinse bucket to see multiple cameras/computers/torches piled thick, sloshing and banging into each other on a bumpy ride back. No, thank you.

Imagine this on the 2nd day of a liveaboard:
my friend and another guy have very similar ikelite rigs. The crew grabs my friends unlatched rig off the camera table and hands it to the other guy in the water, then swapping it out when the guy sees its not his. My friend returns to find his rig in the same spot, but completely flooded (they haddn't even noticed). Yes, this happened, though luckily the operater was willing to replace it.

I never bother with a carrying strap, i find the handle works fine and the rig's already got too many bits & pieces - a strap would just get in the way. Though the above posted short rope with clips would be the least obtrusive.

Strap or not, if you repeadly place your trust in random people to handle something that expensive, delicate & specialized you're just setting yourself up for catastrophe imho.

Cheers,

Chris

i find myself shooting much more carefully now with the D800 - I realize how large the images are and its almost making me value each 'click' much more. Feels like back in the film days a bit. Still got my D700 when I just need to fire away. Of course I'm referring to topside, cant afford to house the D800 anytime soon (still D700 UW).

then as loftus says, trying when I can to just pick keepers though it doesn't always happen.

get the nikon 1.4tc and be done with it. The only reason you'd get the kenko would be to use it on a lens not compatible with the nikon. the nikon is far superior.