Travelling with film stock

[Graham Ellard]

Hi, can anyone offer advice about travelling with film stock - both unexposed and exposed 16mm, 250D?

We have a lot of experience flying from London to Europe and Japan and have only had a problem once (at Pisa airport) but we understand that new scanners are being used in a lot of major airports and with a trip to Italy planned for February next year are concerned about the risks of x-ray damage.

Can anyone advise on the safety of the latest scanners, and/or how we can have our kit hand-checked at security?

Thanks.

[Felix Finken]

Hi there, 

 

I would suggest in getting your film stock checked separately without going through a scanner. Some scanners do damage your film and some don't, but one thing is for sure: It's not good for a film stock to be scanned and it's a bit out your control if the damage is really bad or not even visible - so I would suggest getting you film checked separately. That's common practice and they'll do an explosive test. 

Having sad all of this, I once travelled with 35mm stills film and the explosive test turned out be falsely positive, but it had to go through the xray scanner anyway but luckily it had no visible effect on the film...

 

Best wishes 

Felix

[Luis Hartmann]

1 hour ago, Graham Ellard said:

Hi, can anyone offer advice about travelling with film stock - both unexposed and exposed 16mm, 250D?

We have a lot of experience flying from London to Europe and Japan and have only had a problem once (at Pisa airport) but we understand that new scanners are being used in a lot of major airports and with a trip to Italy planned for February next year are concerned about the risks of x-ray damage.

Can anyone advise on the safety of the latest scanners, and/or how we can have our kit hand-checked at security?

Thanks.

I always ask them, to handcheck, in some places they can be iffy with it, like CDG.
If they don't do it, plead with them, tell them that it's not the same as photo film.
In theory there shouldn't be an issue, especially on lower ASAs like the 7207, but who wants to risk it?

Edited December 18, 2024 by Luis Hartmann

[Uli Meyer]

The new scanners will damage film and airport staff are aware of it. I've not had a problem getting cans hand-checked.

[Phillip Mosness]

Avoid putting film in your checked in luggage.

The x-rays for checked luggage can be  much harsher than the carry on machines.

I've had mixed results with asking for a hand check. Last month I had a 400' re-can of 5222 and asked for a hand check at the Burbank airport.

I was denied, and it had to go through the x-ray,  yet I had had no trouble a year before with a new 400' roll of 5203. 

The only difference seemed to be that one was factory new in the cardboard case, and the other had different tape on the edge, etc. 

It can really depend on who you're talking to. 

[Dirk DeJonghe]

We advise customers not to carry unprocessed films on airline flights, it is very unpredictable if manual inspections will be allowed.

Until recently the advice was to ship by air express (DHL, Fedex, UPS) to and from locations. We have done thousands of shipments without any problems.

However, earlier this year, there were fire bomb attacks by parcel shipments, see this link: Fire bomb attack on DHL

This means that x-ray scanning is now compulsory for DHL shipments, it affects mainly 500T filmstock on very dark images but is also cumulative. Previously it was possible to avoid it by asking for manual inspection at the shipping office, no longer.

Luckily we have found alternative shipping by road, not at all subjected to x-ray, it takes one or two extra days compared to air express. These experiences are valid for Europe, other continents may vary.

[Marius Krist]

This year, I traveled from Berlin to Iceland, from Iceland to Paris, and then to Mexico City. I carried 15 rolls of 100 ft film in a separate bag. On the bag, I placed the Kodak PDF with the "Do Not X-Ray" notice and always requested a hand inspection. The airport staff was consistently very kind when I explained that we were shooting a short film on motion picture film and I politely asked if the film could be hand-inspected. Occasionally, the police showed up during the hand inspection. It's important to plan for some extra time for this process.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

Yes, it may work in most cases, but every time you change flights, a new negociation will have to take place. Outcome uncertain.

I have had customers who had the choice of boarding the flight with x-ray inspection or be denied boarding. This would ruin your day either way.

Anything that happens somewhere in the world may drive up geopolitical tension and may affect how lenient the inspectors are.

 

 

 

[Marius Krist]

Yes, it was stressful every time we changed flights. I would also try to avoid it now by buying the reels on location if possible.

[Marcel Zyskind]

On 12/19/2024 at 10:29 AM, Dirk DeJonghe said:

We advise customers not to carry unprocessed films on airline flights, it is very unpredictable if manual inspections will be allowed.

Until recently the advice was to ship by air express (DHL, Fedex, UPS) to and from locations. We have done thousands of shipments without any problems.

However, earlier this year, there were fire bomb attacks by parcel shipments, see this link: Fire bomb attack on DHL

This means that x-ray scanning is now compulsory for DHL shipments, it affects mainly 500T filmstock on very dark images but is also cumulative. Previously it was possible to avoid it by asking for manual inspection at the shipping office, no longer.

Luckily we have found alternative shipping by road, not at all subjected to x-ray, it takes one or two extra days compared to air express. These experiences are valid for Europe, other continents may vary.

Hi Dirk,

This DHL business sucks big time! Have they not always x-rayed packages though? Do you know if they have changed to CT scanners? The problem with road shipping, is as you say that it takes 1 or 2 days extra. Some film insurances demand that your footage is developed and scanned within 24 hrs. Some productions just require a quicker turnaround. What if we are shooting in far away places, like islands in the north atlantic?  A couple of months ago (before DHL attacks) I spoke to Jetpak.com in Denmark who were willing to send without x-ray. I don't know if this is still the case. They were more costly than DHL.

We need more local labs. Either way I will fight to keep shooting film no matter what!

Happy Christmas to everyone.

[Mark Dunn]

CT scanning still uses X-rays.

[Marcel Zyskind]

32 minutes ago, Mark Dunn said:

CT scanning still uses X-rays.

Oh I know. But they seem to be worse for film stock, hence why I was asking.

[Marcel Zyskind]

FYI

https://www.handcheckfilm.com/

[CJ Johnson]

I travel quite a bit with film, mostly in the United States. I've never had an issue with getting the TSA to hand inspect my film. They've always been professional about it (so far, at least!).

I did have a 400' roll of 500T trigger the explosives detection machine recently. It was very weird as it came straight from Kodak and had always been stored with another roll which passed the test without issues.

Fortunately I had my changing bag with me and was able to help the officer open up the can and do a manual inspection. He said it saved me several hours of waiting for them to come calibrate the machine, so I was glad I had it on me.

I've only run film through the x-ray scanner once on accident. It was 6 or so 100' rolls; a mix of 250D and 500T. When I shot the rolls later and developed them, they had a weird pulsing noise effect as if one side of the roll had been flashed slightly. I can't prove it was the X-rays, but I haven't seen anything like it before or since.

[Floris Vanhoof]

I had my films hand checked in EU, US and Japan without much problems. The Kodak "do not X-ray" PDF helps. And of course taking your film out of the camera and having the camera go through the scanner.

Once in Italy, another passenger had to help with translation and this took long. In Spain, they had me wait over 30 minutes before the customs supervisor wanted to help. 

Years ago, in Brussels, a customs officer told me the film would be damaged anyway because of cosmic radiation in the plane. Which I doubt will have any effect as the flight is not high enough or long enough to have an effect. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Stephen Perera]

I will tell you my experience.......here in Gibraltar we have daily flights to the UK so I recently sent 1200ft of 500T with my sister who was taking a trip to London. She took my film to Cinelab London personally by hand after my arranging a hand check at Gibraltar airport. They did an 'explosives swab' as they called it.

Gibraltar Airport has one of the new scanners for all luggage that goes in the HOLD (where the suitcases go) that will fog film 100% no doubt, but they have the less invasive one for the 'hand luggage' that does NOT fog film.

So I decided I had to shoot another 100ft for the same project and this time I used 250D.

I was stuck, I don't have anyone to take the film for me as hand luggage any time soon so I started to look at overland couriers (rabbit hole) but NOBODY could not guarantee it would not get scanned somewhere along the line by the borders they cross etc. not to mention the cost!

Lo and behold the best option was staring at me in the face...and it was also the cheapest! The Film Gods had spoken!

I sent the roll by Royal Gibraltar Post Office registered airmail which gets scanned once using the 'normal' xray machine that does NOT fog film. I spoke to Gibraltar Airport director (a friend of mine) about how airmail is scanned before I sent it and he assured me that it would be fine. He quoted that their machine is fine for all film under 800asa.

The film came back scanned beautifully from Cinelab London.

[Stephen Perera]

This is a great great investigation by Lina Bessonova:

 

[Dirk DeJonghe]

Big difference with motion picture films, we are looking at 24 fps, even a small variation in D-Min will be visible as pulsating blacks.

 

[Stephen Perera]

Just now, Dirk DeJonghe said:

Big difference with motion picture films, we are looking at 24 fps, even a small variation in D-Min will be visible as pulsating blacks.

I had not thought of this but makes sense.....still, Lina did a great job testing