4x5 FP4 survives a dozen airport scans

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Originally Posted by Rayt

I was flying back from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and saw they had the new 3D scanners the ones that look like CT scanners in hospitals. I recall reading somewhere these 3D scanners take hundreds of images of your luggage to form a 3D image. While I have never seen ill effects on my film from normal x ray machine I was worried about the new ones. I was carrying lots of 135 film and asked for a hand check and they said yes. Whew. Any one has experience with these 3D scanners? I will have 100 sheets of 4x5 TMY through SFO and know they have the 3D scanners. I don’t want to risk TSA opening the box to swab the inside even if they ok hand check.

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I haven’t yet found much info about the impact of these new scanning machines on film. Looking forward to seeing any data or authoritative information to support observations and experiences. But if you think film photographers are the only people with challenges at airport baggage screening, check this out:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...-penis/527673/

Brian, forget the tools (seen plenty on the web), but the bat detector....yeah babe!!! Thanks for posting that.

Les

I"m writing this in case it's useful for someone in the future. Was recently at the end of a trip in a smaller city in Germany, and decided to send my box of exposed film to the lab I use back in the states via DHL, figured to avoid a few more airport scans. I had done this without issue several times before. (though not recently from Germany)

I paid 40 euros and mailed the box on July 24th, the person at the counter told me that it would take 6 days. It didn't arrive until August 13th, (fourteen business days) and according to the tracking info, spent much of that time sitting in various DHL sorting facilities in Germany.

The nearest fedex location was over an hour away, and I was without a car, but I guess DHL is now just like US mail. So I would advise against using them, I know from now on I'll simply carry it on – the film seemed fine after processing but I never want to go through this again.