DHL X-Rays and shipping film overseas

[Hwang Toe]

I purchased four rolls of Kodak Vision3 500T 400ft from B&H and received them in South Korea via international shipping.

Recently, after shooting in Australia, my film was scanned by TSA X-ray during travel to Korea, which caused issues with the film.

I’m curious whether X-ray scanning also occurs during the shipping process.

I plan to post this question on a cinematography forum. How should I phrase it?

[Robert Houllahan]

To some degree all packages are screened for shipping but not at the high rad levels used in a Airport scanner.

We receive film shipped into Cinelab from all over the world by all the carriers and have never seen any scan damage from shipping.

All the scanner damage we have seen recently has been from the new CT scanner machines at airports. Those seem to just create an overall fogging and not sharp lines like some of the older machines particularly old Soviet X-Ray machines at airports which have likely all been pulled from service.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

Since last summer, after 2 firebomb attacks on DHL (Leipzig and Manchester) , their x-ray inspection has been increased in intensity. We had several instances of DHL x-ray damage and stopped using them except for local shipments inside the country.

We can easily see if the x-ray exposure happened before of after camera exposure. We shipped via DHL Brussels to all continents, mainly Europe. For 250D and 500T we could see pulsating blues in the black levels.

So far, Fedex has been fine; they allowed us to test, we asked them to put 500T through the scanner, 1x  2x  4x and 8x. Nothing could be detected. When possible we ship Fedex (road), no x-ray inspection involved.

Kodak used to ship via UPS Air to us, but they had new CT scanners two years ago and now Kodak ships UPS ground.

 

 

[Balz Auf der Maur]

How can you tell if the scan happened before or after the exposure in camera? I‘m currently on a production that is having problems with X-Rayed 16mm stock and its not clear if the scan happened before the rolls were sold/shot or in the shipping process to the lab afterwards (via DHL but not international).

[Robert Houllahan]

On 3/8/2025 at 11:09 AM, Dirk DeJonghe said:

Since last summer, after 2 firebomb attacks on DHL (Leipzig and Manchester) , their x-ray inspection has been increased in intensity. We had several instances of DHL x-ray damage and stopped using them except for local shipments inside the country.

We can easily see if the x-ray exposure happened before of after camera exposure. We shipped via DHL Brussels to all continents, mainly Europe. For 250D and 500T we could see pulsating blues in the black levels.

So far, Fedex has been fine; they allowed us to test, we asked them to put 500T through the scanner, 1x  2x  4x and 8x. Nothing could be detected. When possible we ship Fedex (road), no x-ray inspection involved.

Kodak used to ship via UPS Air to us, but they had new CT scanners two years ago and now Kodak ships UPS ground.

 

 

Good to know about that DHL issue, so far we have received DHL this year mostly from South America and Canada without any X-Ray issues.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

If you look at the pulse frequency at the head of the roll and compare it to the pulse frequency at the tail, if head frequency is larger then the x-ray exposure happened before camera exposure and vice versa. Use a waveform monitor and measure peak pulse to peak pulse in frames.

You can visualize this like driving a nail sideways into the roll.

 

Here is some more information on the firebomb attack on DHL, it is blamed on the Russians, but in these times, nobody can be sure about this: Firebomb attack DHL

[Balz Auf der Maur]

9 hours ago, Dirk DeJonghe said:

If you look at the pulse frequency at the head of the roll and compare it to the pulse frequency at the tail, if head frequency is larger then the x-ray exposure happened before camera exposure and vice versa. Use a waveform monitor and measure peak pulse to peak pulse in frames.

You can visualize this like driving a nail sideways into the roll.

 

Here is some more information on the firebomb attack on DHL, it is blamed on the Russians, but in these times, nobody can be sure about this: Firebomb attack DHL

Thanks! I told the team to look out for this.

[Hwang Toe]

I am planning to test with 100 feet first soon.
I will keep you updated.
Hopefully, there won’t be any issues.