Circumventing fogging in Italy

Well its been a long time since I've flown, so I really have NO idea

what I should be concerned about with my camera. I'm going to be in

Italy for a few weeks in October, and I'm just wondering what I

should take care of. I'm assuming I don't need to worry about my

cameras at all, correct? For the film should I get one of those lead

bags or what?

Unless you bring over 400 speed, don't worry about xrays. Don't buy the lead bags, the operator will just up the dosage and burn through it. I haven't had a roll of film fogged in my life, even with many passes on one trip.

 

Still love to know what people do with high speed black and white, though!

There is just no reliable source of information to confirm that "the operator can just turn up" the signal strength to punch through a lead bag. Do what I did, take a couple of rolls of ISO 800, pull the lead bag out and lay it by itself on the belt, explain to the attendant that you have some ISO 800 film and that you'd like it checked by hand. Piece of cake (at least in the US and northern Europe, don't know about Italy). As a matter of fact, for my next trip I'm going to take a felt marker and write "ISO 800" in big letters on the bag just for effect. It can't hurt.

It may be different for different X-ray scanners: some may enable the screener to turn up the power, some may not. When you see her/him turn dials and press buttons, the operator's probably either stopping the transport to give one bag a thorough look or she's changing display settings.<p>General agreement is that lead bags either have no effect or force a hand check of its contents, which is fine if you have ISO 800 film but otherwise just a hassle. Another note: the cosmic ray dose your films (and you, too) get while flying from the US to Europe, is considerably higher than the X-ray dose. (I have to find the precise numbers again, but as far as I remember it can be more than three times during a solar storm.)<p>And, finally, not only are there many reliable photo stores in Italy where you can get fresh film and have your film developed, European places also don't have X-ray scanners at every public building's entrance. Enjoy your trip!

<i>European places also don't have X-ray scanners at every

public building's entrance</i><br><br>Not entirely true

nowadays. The Louvre in Paris is one place you can't get into

(even just to the ticketing area) without your baggage going

through a scanner.

 

Getting back to the original poster's question: I've flown in and

out of Italy many times in the last 18 months or so. I routinely

take film of ISO 100-400 without problems - including unused

film that will have been taken back home and then taken back to

Italy again (maybe more than once or twice). I've become pretty

relaxed about x-ray scanners at airports and don't bother asking

for hand inspections. Note that I don't use high speed film so

YMMV.

There seems to be a spectrum of opinion about the harm x-ray machines may or may not do. Personally, I'm in the "let them scan it" camp, because I've never experienced any problem - even when film has been through various machines several times on a long trip. But, working on the no smoke without fire hypothesis, there are some folks who advocate hand searching wherever possible - which suggests someone has convincing evidence of damage. So, do they? This topic is a regular one, hereabouts. Are there any members who can definitively claim that their film was damaged by airport x-ray machinery, and what were the circumstances?

When a friend of mine returned from India, one frame from her 10 rolls of Ektachrome 100, which she had carried in her carry-on luggage, showed a strong magenta spot that extended all across the film's width. Let me add that she had brought the film from Germany to India and had had to change flights on her way back. Fwiw, the damaged frame had been right behind the shutter of her camera, waiting to be exposed, when it went through the scanners on her way back. (We concluded this from the scene it showed: Frankfurt airport.) The damage was too limited to be heat-related.<p>A roll of Fuji Neopan 400 was definitely <u>not</u> damaged after having been sent through 4 scanners intentionally: when another friend of mine travelled from Munich to London, he took the film with him and subsequently kept it in his carry-on bag for a flight to London to Dublin, then from Dublin to Limerick, and from Limerick back to London. He then mailed the film to me; it was fine. Perhaps it was luck, but afaict this result is pretty average.<p>What really gets at film is a high number of scans. If you fly, let's say, from Munich to Frankfurt, where you change flights for Dallas/Fort Worth to visit relatives, return via New York, where you visit several museums, and have to change flights again in Frankfurt, expect odd spots even on ISO 100 film.<p>It's not just scanners at any museum entrance, it's also natural radiation that really adds up during intercontinental flights: first, you're above 30,000' of air that otherwise absorb lots of cosmic radiation. Second, the common routes that connect Europe and North America, and North America with East Asia, touch the Arctic, where the electromagnetic field is pretty weak; i.e. loaded particles that the sun has emitted, can penetrate relatively deep into the atmosphere. If you fly during a solar storm, chances are a lead bag really does make sense. Although you then better take a large one for yourself as well.