Super 8 film and border crossing X-ray.

Christian Nelson · September 12, 2012

Hi I am headed to Montana from Canada and was wondering if anyone has crossed borders with film? Just curious if the X-ray scans they do will fog the film. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

jackson defa · September 15, 2012

Don't ever let them x-ray your film. this is very bad. I travel with film sometimes and when I get to the airport I tell the person in line and security I have film and it CANNOT be x-rayed under any condition. they are trained for this. they usually roll their eyes, take it from me and do what is called a "hand inspection" - whatever that means. Then they give it back to me on the other side of security. They are trained for these situations and should know exactly what to do. If they don't, or seem skeptical, I always say "hand inspection" and if that doesn't seem to ring a bell, I ask for someone els to help me.

bureaucrazy · September 15, 2012

Hi Christian,

If they agree to do a hand inspection that's fantastic but some airports will refuse and insist on x-raying it. NEVER put your film into checked in baggage as the X-ray machines are much more powerful than the hand luggage machines. Modern x ray machines have auto exposure so they increase the power depending on the density of what they are looking at. For that reason, you are best off putting the film into a separate tray on the xray conveyor so that the minimum power is used to x-ray the film. I always lay the rolls flat with the sprocket holes at the top side so that most of the xray is hitting the sprocket edge of the film rather than the surface. I have had rolls x-rayed multiple times including 500T film and could not see any fogging or problems, so don't worry too much. One airport x-rayed a camera containing film 6 times because they had never seen one before and becuase they realised they weren't paying attention to the screen so put it through again - nightmare! It's not been processed yet so I'll have to see if it's ruined, but one or two doses should be fine.

Christian Nelson · September 16, 2012

I am actually not flying but crossing the border in my car. I don't think X-rays are avoidable. I would think these would be at least as powerful if not more so than the airport ones. I Just ended up bringing one cart and see how it goes. I will post when I get the film back.