I recently flew Manchester to Frankfurt to Newark and back. Film and camera went through machine screening at each location and had no impact on the images.
While not a german airport, I have recently talked to security at Copenhagen airport. They absolutely require that I bring a darkroom bag for them to use, if I want my films hand checked. It is either that or I have to put them through the scanner. I asked if they were going to open the 35mm canisters and put them back together again, but no answer came back.
Calumet München has every film in stock. Write them an email to reserve whatever you need.
Ulrik: Yes, I think they're just reserving the right to check your film down to the film level. I'll be interested to hear what ACTUALLY happens, when you get back.
Yes, that's the concern I have. I've been vacillating on this, but I'm leaning towards bringing a couple of rolls of film and rolling the dice. I know I can get it hand-inspected in Los Angeles, so worst-case it only takes one ride through the X-ray if my request in Munich is denied.
At the risk of hijacking my own thread...
I get the Impression that if it goes through a CT scanner it’ll be ruined.
In the last reply from Copenhagen Airport security, the guy writing me had been told that if the films could handle the flight in the cabin in my hand luggage, it would be fine going through the security scanner, because the background radiation is much higher in the cabin than what is used in the scanner. Now, I am certainly not a radiation expert, but I had my doubts regarding that statement. I asked one my former teachers, who is a physicist and he said that it is the other way around.
There might be a grain of truth to what they are saying - according to https://theconversation.com/air-tra...tion-how-much-health-risk-comes-with-it-78790 the dose from flying on a commercial airliner at 35,000ft is 0.003 millisievert/hour, so it would appear that on a one hour flight you’d get 3 times as much dose as the film would get from the X-Ray machine.
The last time I flew I carried a five pack of ProImage there and back as hand luggage with no problems. I put it in a thin mesh bag on one of the trays so the X-ray machine could see it clearly and minimise the need for rescans. But that wasn’t for the new CT machines which are a much higher dose.Anyway, if they won't hand check my films, I am just going to run them through the scanner. At least, for future travels, I will find out if anything happens. And I expect sunny weather in Spain, so it'll mostly be iso 100 films
Back when flying with film was a common thing to do, there was a theory that those would cause the machine operator to be suspicious. They'd just see a big black space, so they'd turn up the X-Ray power until they could see it, probably frying the film.
I can't remember, it was a long time ago. It's most likely SFO, but possibly LHR, or CDG.
Hah! You too, eh? (Hmm, LHR, CDG and MCO... my guess would be you're an American Airlines flyer, but SFO is a puzzle. I stopped flying AA when they pulled out of BUR. Now they're back, but I'm not back with them.)
In those days it tended to be United, until I got totally p***ed off at them. BUR would be Southwest.
Sorry Per, I forgot to reply -- thanks for this. I am 99% sure I can get the film hand-inspected in the USA; it's the exposed film I don't know about! (But others' experience is encouraging.)
