Airline travel with film

Three checks is abit over the top! But then given the current situation in Kenya, with bombs going off when you least expect it, I guess its permissible.

The most I have experienced is 2 at Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and Kigali (Rwanda).

It would definitely be good to hear others’ experiences especially with exposure to airport scanners.

I always travel with my films stored in Rowi x-ray protection bags (120, 400 asa bw +slides) and never had any film damaged. I also "tested"a film of Portra 120 (400 asa) keeping it outside the protection bags during all my trips for 4 years. It passed many airport scanners and also those old type scanners you can find in India at the entrance of temples. The same film was also scanned in my camera bag in Katmandu airport were they have a huge old fashioned scanner (they scan the large luggages of trekkers -tents,camping stuff,kajaks, etc).
I recently expose the film and had great results, no light leaks or other visible damages…

Hi Christopher,
I recently travelled with both 400 and 3200 form London to Jakarta and with some of the same film from London to Cairo, must have been through about 15 scanners with no ill effects. I have all but given up asking for hand searches at airports but will never put film through hotel or tourist site security scanners as these have caused problems in the past.

https://www.thesochiproject.org/shop/product/13/

What is this thing “film”? Airlines I know about but film?

Christopher, I might have some film bags you could borrow, if you want, since you seem to be close by (if you’re in Chester at the moment). Look me up and send me an email, if you wish.

A number of you have mentioned film bags, but if I have a film bag in my carry luggage, won’t it show up on the security scanner and trigger a bag search anyway? If so, I might as well just carry the film in a clear plastic bag and ask for the search.

Yes, the x-ray proof film bag will trigger a hand search/visual inspection – asking for a visual inspection will often trigger an argument with TSA.

so fastest approach, in my experience: film in clear plastic bag, inside lead-lined x-ray bag. TSA sees the blacked-out area in their x-ray monitor, then tells you that they’ll have to perform a visual inspection. pulls out clear plastic bag, does the swab test, on you go.

Of late, I come across TSA employees who are totally confused by the black out, since film is so rare that they’ve probably never seen an X-ray bag.

also, fyi, in two decades of putting bags of film through X-ray machines (repeatedly) around the world, with lead bags, and without, 3200ASA, DHL, FedEx – never had any problems with film being damaged by X-ray.

Out of interest, does anyone know what, if any, x-rays stuff shipped via DHL or UPS etc is subjected to?

don’t know for sure, but I’ve sent film by DHL from Kandahar Air Field to the US, and assume its gone through multiple high dose X-ray. no problems observed.

also, it appears we’ve all had this conversation before:

http://www.lightstalkers.org/posts/airport-x-ray-scanners-and-film