Pete (NetDoc) said if a picture is worth 1000 words, a video is worth 10,000. I use action cameras extensively while teaching. My first experience with that was at PDIC HQ in Scranton, PA in the 1980's when I was going through instructor training. We were videoed in the classroom and underwater so that our lectures and skills could be critiqued later by the IT's and they could catch more to fix or praise. When I did GUE classes, I found myself back on video with the rest of my team so that our instructors could give us feedback. It was a great learning tool and I adopted it with the popularity of action cameras. Video is an incredible tool for my coaching business. But, as I tell my students, once they know what to look for, they can often correct their own techniques.
Thanks to their size and affordability, action cameras can be used by almost every diver to improve his or her own diving. By watching yourself and seeing what you do right, what you do wrong, what can be improved, and what you like about your performance, your local dive spot can become a great classroom. My favorite way of doing this is to place an action cam on a surfboard mount that is attached to a lead diving weight. I set the camera on a surface such as a training platform and do various skills. I can watch the video later and critique myself.
Videos are also proof of performance. The thread about arrogance sparked this post. While performing tank removal and replace skills the other day, I shot this on first attempt doing the skill three times. The second time the skill went faster, but I moved left and right more while hovering. The third time, my hose fouled and I had to remove and replace it again to fix that hiccup. The fourth time was good, but the video ended up being saved as two files part way through and was more of a pain to edit. After 35 years of diving, I'm still not perfect. Cameras tell a tale social media posts, C-cards, and T-shirts cannot. Our performance on video is often humbling. Crap! My left fin wasn't flat at times. Need to work on that.
Thanks to their size and affordability, action cameras can be used by almost every diver to improve his or her own diving. By watching yourself and seeing what you do right, what you do wrong, what can be improved, and what you like about your performance, your local dive spot can become a great classroom. My favorite way of doing this is to place an action cam on a surfboard mount that is attached to a lead diving weight. I set the camera on a surface such as a training platform and do various skills. I can watch the video later and critique myself.
Videos are also proof of performance. The thread about arrogance sparked this post. While performing tank removal and replace skills the other day, I shot this on first attempt doing the skill three times. The second time the skill went faster, but I moved left and right more while hovering. The third time, my hose fouled and I had to remove and replace it again to fix that hiccup. The fourth time was good, but the video ended up being saved as two files part way through and was more of a pain to edit. After 35 years of diving, I'm still not perfect. Cameras tell a tale social media posts, C-cards, and T-shirts cannot. Our performance on video is often humbling. Crap! My left fin wasn't flat at times. Need to work on that.
