Ponderings about film and Xrays

[antistatic]

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It seem that fear of exposing film to Xrays at airports is a recurring subject for discussion which got me thinking.

 

Now I, and I assume many photographers, live many miles from the factory making my favorite film and that the journey from the factory to the innards of my camera would involve the crossing of several international borders which would involve customs and security screening. I also doubt that the fine people working in customs and security would say "Oh it's a box of Neopan 1600, let's go easy on the rays".

 

Surely most film has had a fair soaking of Xrays long before we ever get to ask for hand checks at airport security.

 

David

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[rob_x2004]

It gets its best soaking in flight, which is worth about a chest xray. Customs and borders is nothing.

 

Having said that, I have had about two hundred national geographic covers completely ruined by the xray machines. I get stuff knocked out of focus, horizons shift and tilt, exposures get wrecked, and there ws once this bird in a pub that was an absolute stunner but when I got the film developed....jeez. Yea if it wasnt for airport xrays I would be regarded as salgado or the new david bailey by now:(.

[antistatic]

Having said that, I have had about two hundred national geographic covers completely ruined by the xray machines. I get stuff knocked out of focus, horizons shift and tilt, exposures get wrecked, and there ws once this bird in a pub that was an absolute stunner but when I got the film developed....jeez. Yea if it wasnt for airport xrays I would be regarded as salgado or the new david bailey by now:(.

 

I feel your pain Rob. Curse you, demonic rays of X !!

[erl]

Here's an allied question, but slightly different. Next month I am being let loose on the world at large and will be shooting mainly M8 digital. However, I cannot bring myself to leave my M7 at home, so the usual problem of xrays on film. I will be passing through a minimum of eight xray points that I know of, and there could be more. That constitutes risk level #1.

 

Alternatively, I have thought of risk level # 2 whereby I send my films in luggage checked straight through to my destination. Now I know 'hold' luggage gets a bigger zap, but is it fair to assume that it may be less than the cumulative zapping as I carry it with me as hand luggage? Yeah, I know, how long is a piece of string.

 

Are there any comments of use on this condrum out there in clever land? I would be interested in them.

[JBA]

While I was back in the US recently, I bought 10 rolls each of my favorite films because they were roughly half what they cost in Tokyo. The guy at the camera shop had lots of helpful advice about film and airport security.

 

First of all, he advised me to send all my film by either UPS or DHL rather than taking it with me. These couriers do not X-ray packages because nobody has anything to gain politically by blowing up a cargo plane.

 

Secondly, he advised me to request hand inspection of any loaded cameras or film I'd be carrying through.

(I ended up with an unfinished roll of Velvia 50 in my SL2 and asked to have it hand-inspected. With my heart in my throat, I watched the security people handle my irreplaceable treasure, and was reassured to see that they treated it very delicately. One of the agents swabbed it with several cotton pads from a dispenser. When I asked what they were for, he told me they were to check for explosives.)

 

Thirdly, he told me to think of X-rays as another form of light radiation that the human eye can't see but film can. Therefore, the higher the ISO, the higher the chance X-rays will affect it. (You might know this; I didn't.)

 

Finally, in terms of geographically specific information, he mentioned that Portland, Maine and Boston's Logan airports have dialed up their X-ray machines because the 9/11 hijackers passed through these airports on their way to commit the dirty deeds.

 

In short, send your film by courier. It's fast and safe.

 

Incidentally, he mentioned that lens glass is opaque to X-rays, so sometimes security agents will take out your lenses to hand-inspect them. (The agents at Logan just had me take out my M6 so they could swab it.)

[rob_x2004]

John, I would be at the point of almost writing off the advice you were given. Customs xray. So does post office. Whether one airport has their machines dialed up more than others is rather odd. Advances in xray machines lately has been on the detector side, and digital enhancement of the results, not higher doses of radiation. Were the machines in the dangerous league, which I doubt they are capable of, your work cover people would have the people using them in lead gowns, and auditing their wages books.

[andybarton]

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We have ragged the "hand checking" thing in a recent thread here.

[guywalder]

this subject just doesnt go away! In the nearly 30 years I have been interested in photography it has always been a topic. Yet I can't recall ever seeing a real problem being reported.

In the thread Andy refers to there are plenty of people commenting, but only 1 of them claims to have had a problem (on the Beijing subway). In comparison to the Canon focus problem, or any of the various M8 problems the rate of occurence is (seemingly) non-existant.

I did a trip a few years ago which involved carrying scores of rolls of unprocessed film through at least 8 checks, with absolutely no problem. Yet if you check Kodak's website they say x-ray machines 'will' (not 'might') damage film and give examples of how the damage manifests after a single pass through a machine. Yet practical experience is completely at odds with Kodak's site.....

 

Maybe the corporates desperately covering their a**s is the real problem, not the x-ray machines?

 

ps link is here: Baggage X-ray Scanning Effects on Film

of course it is all very US specific

[Guest darkstar2004]

I did a trip a few years ago which involved carrying scores of rolls of unprocessed film through at least 8 checks, with absolutely no problem. Yet if you check Kodak's website they say x-ray machines 'will' (not 'might') damage film and give examples of how the damage manifests after a single pass through a machine. Yet practical experience is completely at odds with Kodak's site.....

I have read from several sources that the x-ray machines that hand carried bags are inspected with is not the problem - it's the machines that checked luggage are x-rayed with that will ruin your film.

 

The warning I have always heard is "Never put your undeveloped film in your checked luggage."

 

Take a look at this article X-Ray Check-In Luggage Can Damage Film

and this one Fwd: Protecting Film from New X-Rays which says in part,

What can you do?

 

InVision, PIMA, FAA and F-Stop, as well as major film manufacturers

like Kodak, Fuji and Ilford, all say the same thing: Keep all your

unexposed film in your carry-on luggage, and ask for it to be

hand-inspected if any of it is rated 1000 ASA or higher. (At the moment

the CTX-5000 isn't used to check carry-on bags, but that might change

in the future.)

Another good webpage about this topic is Airport X-Rays Damage Film, Underwater Photography, Scuba Diving, Stock Images, Screensavers, Screen Savers, Eco-Photo Explorers