kanonfodr
Contributor
I would like to speak as an amateur videographer who dives in both team and not-so-team groups. I bring my camera on every dive (albeit mine is much smaller than yours) and while I am shooting lots of video for my dives I still prefer to place the dive first with video second. And at first it was a challenge in task-loading but the more you do it the easier it gets. With patient teammates it will soon become a non-issue, as you will be able to manage the camera, team, and eventually leading the dive while shooting video/photos and maintaining team cohesion.
Inevitably the camera comes in handy in a team environment: for instance this weekend we were doing training on our second dive of the day and I ended up shooting for both teams. But even on fun dives we can manage to include the camera into the equation. But IMO it isn't fair to make every dive a video/photo dive: the camera can come along but I owe it to my buddies to meet the goals of the dive, even if it means sacrificing an awesome shot. Luckily I don't have to do that too often, since our dives aren't that meticulous but that's where the team approach comes in: we all may sacrifice a little bit but we gain a lot more by sharing the experience and everyone gets most of what they wanted. I'm willing to accept that, because I can always go diving again.
Finally, I leave you with some shameless plugs regarding team diving and videos:
IDH 14 Jan 2011 on Vimeo : Blackwood came over for a visit and since conditions were iffy for shore diving we hopped a boat charter. This was my first time diving in a DIR team with TWO cameras :shocked2: especially since we had never dived together before but it worked out great!
HaTeD Training 5 Jan 2011 on Vimeo : Joined our local GUE crew (Hawaii Technical Divers) for a midweek training dive. Jo, our soon-to-be GUE instructor, was mentoring two pre-Fundies divers on skills while my Fundies partner Bruce and I decided to work on ascents and descents since he had just replaced the dump valve in his drysuit. We ended with a quick trip to the Buddha statue then hung around with a bunch of turtles while we watched the Fundies guys work on their skills before turning the dive on cold.
Makaha 11 Nov 2010 on Vimeo : This was a Big Dive for myself and my friend Murphy. He's not GUE, but still an awesome diver and I really enjoyed this dive. We traveled almost a mile round-trip underwater to visit a site that's normally enjoyed from a boat. We visited a lot of the caverns and met some friendly turtles, as well as scared some recreational divers when we emerged from a shadowy lava tube right behind them in our doubles and my drysuit
. Peace,
Greg
