Happy travel tale

Greetings and happy New Year. This is my first post here since the

forum left Tuan's site. I just wanted to relate a travel experience

with my 4x5 kit. For Christmas, we flew to my wife's family's house

near Austin, Texas. I decided to take my Wista 4x5, two lenses, six

film holders and related equipment. I packed it in an old Tundra

satchel-type bag. To my suprise, the camera bag was never opened and

gone through by airport security personnel. It just went through the

X-ray machine and that was it. With all the weird looking things in

there -- spot meter that resembles a pistol, cable releases that look

like wires, etc. -- I thought for sure I would have trouble getting

through security. This was the first time I've taken my large format

gear on a plane, and I must say, it was a piece of cake. My camera

bag even fit perfectly under the seat in front of me. For those of

you who might be reluctant to fly with your large format gear, don't

be. In my case, at least, it was no problem.

 

Ben Calwell

I have traveled abroad recently and within the country with both a medium format and 4x5 systems including a lot of film and also had a good experience.

I must say that the new inspectors are far more knowlegeable and it its a breath of fresh air not to have to explain somebody what iso is and that film comes in more forms than 35 mm casetts.Still not quite perfect since they made me take my shoes off while another person examined my photo backpacks and dropped some of the contents since they would not let me touch the bags.I do not quite understand the reason for this and hopefully it will get better in the future.

The more we educate those people the better and I would be interested to hear if there is any avenue to do this or if photographers could be somehow involved in the fashioning of some of the rules about photo gear inspection.

Thank you for the answers.

 

Luis a de Santos

Ben, these airport security problems seem to depend on the airline, the airport, the day and time of the flight, and which supervisor is on duty to see if the inspectors are doing their job properly. You were fortunate. Some people have had horrible experiences when passing through the airport security check points. By the way, how did you transport the tripod?

I had the same easy experience, flying with my LF stuff as carryon from Philadelphia RT to Austin, Las Vegas, and Nashville since

9/11/01. I was amazed they did not want to check out the gunlike Pentax spotmeter. By the way, my SwissCard also got through 5 airport x-ray machines... it has a knife blade and several other sharp implements. Only Miami International caught it.

 

As for the tripod, I checked it in a duffel bag after wrapping it with a blanket and bubble wrap.

 

Cheers,

Sandy

Eugene,

I packed my tripod (a small Bogen 3001) in one of my suitcases. The airline was Delta. Maybe I lucked out on this trip, as I'm sure others might have tales of horror to relate regarding airport security and view camera equipment/film. By the way, I just developed some of the negs I shot in Texas, and they don't appear to be affected at all by the airport X-rays.