Traveling by Air In July: How should I handle LF Film?

[Oren Grad]

Merged

[jp]

If you take your film factory sealed and perhaps hand inspected and empty film holders, just ship it all back. USPS has flat rate boxes (like the ebay sellers often use) at the post office and you can pad your film holders and film in dirty laundry and box it up and send it home. Many hotels that have conference centers also have UPS stores or USPS stores for the conference people to ship all their conference and trade show stuff in and out. In any case it's probably cheaper than checked bags in the belly of the plane.

[nitroplait]

There is really a lot of speculation on this subject, understandably.
Hasn't anyone done more structured testing? Maybe there are too many variables to be valuable in but a very few situations?

My wife will be going to Japan soon with a flight change in Paris. I'll ask her if she mind carrying an exposed HP5+ film in checked luggage and one in her hand luggage - and develop against a reference roll when she returns.

That is a trip I take regularly and it would be interesting for me to see the actual effect.
In the past I have just bought film in Japan and allowed the usual hand luggage X-ray on the way home - and have not had problems from Narita and Haneda.
These days film is not as easy to come by in Japan as it used to be, so if no visible effect from an extra x-ray scan, I'd probably bring film from home and save on film-shopping-time.

[Drew Bedo]

Hand Check: Sounds as though that is the best option. Shipping the film would just complicate a shortish family vacation.

Factory sealed: Coming back I'll have forty sheets of unprocessed, exposed film. What is the best way to handle that?

So, what about coming back with exposed film in the now unsealed boxes?

Anyone . . .?

[Arne Croell]

Wrt the carry-on CT scanners: I encountered one already in 2019 in Amsterdam Airport, a "ClearScan" by L3Harris. Expecting this, I had prepared two 120 rolls of TMY-2 that were unexposed in the first few frames plus several exposures of Zones I, II, III. I sent one through the CT scanner (right hand set), and got a hand inspection for the other one in addition to my regular exposed rolls (left hand set). The result is below, one trip through the scanner produced an uneven density in excess of 0.5, which would make any real image unusable. Below is also a set of images of the most common machines (as of 2019) that I assembled - know your enemies! We have the Smiths one now here in Huntsville, AL.

[nitroplait]

Wrt the carry-on CT scanners: I encountered one already in 2019 in Amsterdam Airport, a "ClearScan" by L3Harris. Expecting this, I had prepared two 120 rolls of TMY-2 that were unexposed in the first few frames plus several exposures of Zones I, II, III. I sent one through the CT scanner (right hand set), and got a hand inspection for the other one in addition to my regular exposed rolls (left hand set). The result is below, one trip through the scanner produced an uneven density in excess of 0.5, which would make any real image unusable. Below is also a set of images of the most common machines (as of 2019) that I assembled - know your enemies! We have the Smiths one now here in Huntsville, AL.

Wow. That is bad. Thanks for sharing!

[nitroplait]

So, what about coming back with exposed film in the now unsealed boxes?

Anyone . . .?

I wouldn't trust that factory sealed film would get less attention as a rule, after all, you can just re-seal roll film boxes with a glue-stick. Foma and Ilford sheet film boxes are just sealed with a label in one end and clear tape in the other - if you only open the clear tape end, you can use the label end as a hinge without breaking it and re-seal the clear tape end.

I am sure some smart security person would know that a factory seal has little meaning security wise.

[jp]

There is really a lot of speculation on this subject, understandably.
Hasn't anyone done more structured testing? Maybe there are too many variables to be valuable in but a very few situations?

My wife will be going to Japan soon with a flight change in Paris. I'll ask her if she mind carrying an exposed HP5+ film in checked luggage and one in her hand luggage - and develop against a reference roll when she returns.

That is a trip I take regularly and it would be interesting for me to see the actual effect.
In the past I have just bought film in Japan and allowed the usual hand luggage X-ray on the way home - and have not had problems from Narita and Haneda.
These days film is not as easy to come by in Japan as it used to be, so if no visible effect from an extra x-ray scan, I'd probably bring film from home and save on film-shopping-time.

No film ever goes in checked luggage.

[letchhausen]

So, what about coming back with exposed film in the now unsealed boxes?

Anyone . . .?

With hand check they might open one of the packages since they can tell you've resealed them. So, send it back. On my trips my final day will include a trip to the post office to send my film off for processing. That's color neg. But for B&W and any left over film, I'll likely just start sending it back to myself. With the new scanners why take any chances? I just got some color neg back that at first blush, I thought might be underexposed. Now I'm wondering if it was fogged. In any event, safer in the mail.

[nitroplait]

No film ever goes in checked luggage.

For this experiment, obviously it did.
I have only heard statements like yours often repeated, but never seen the results.