Hello all, thanks for your suggestions and comments to my wife's posting about airport x-rays. I had a terrible experience at Seattle's airport, leaving for a 4-day shooting trip with $500 worth of 8x10 Provia-- the nazi security guard said my two choices were to open the film and show it to him, or put it through the x-ray machine. So after a lot of shouting my film all went through the x-ray machine, prompting distressed phone calls to various labs around the country and my wife's posting here. After receiving encouragement from lots of people who have had film x-rayed without problems, I went and used the film on my shoot, and some of it was x-rayed a second time on the way back home (ten sheets that were still in the holders).

As a side note, with only one exception (which is Dublin), every other airport I have been through in the world has used the swabbing machines to inspect boxes of sheet film, but for some reason the Seattle TSA nazis think they need to actually see the film. In Dublin they opened the boxes and felt the film inside the unopened paper sleeve; other airports have opened the sleeve inside a changing bag and felt it manually; the loser in Seattle would not even allow that-- he said he had to SEE the film, to ensure against "bodily injury to your fellow passengers". The longest string of expletives I could think of would pale in comparison to how angry and violated I felt getting that kind of treatment in my own hometown airport.

But, the good news is that none of the x-raying caused any damage to the film. The exposures are fine, with no visible fogging or other defects. In the future my plan is to FedEx the film to the shooting location, if possible, and then FedEx it back home again, but in a pinch at least the x-ray machines in Seattle and New Orleans don't damage 100 speed film.

I have also just been told that if you join the ASMP ($350 per year), they give you a press-pass kind of certificate that gets you through airport security more easily. I don't know if this is true, or if it would work with the Seattle TSA subhumans, but I'm going to do some research and will report back.

Regards,

~cj

www.chrisjordan.com