X-RAY DAMAGE

[Conflow]

Airport X-Ray Baggage Scanners

Hello All,

I have two questions to ask, and I wonder if any Forum Member has any Travel experience in putting their Photo Equipment through "Airport X-Ray Baggage Scanners" ?

ITEM.1.

In the past I experienced damage to (AGFA ASA 400) Holiday Films which were passed through X-Ray Scanners - they fogged up. Despite AGFA's advice to have them 'Hand-Checked' my request was ignored at 'Check-In' and they were put through the Scanner, you know the rest, and you also know that you don't argue with these people !

Question.1

Is there any way of getting Films safely throught 'Check-In' ?

ITEM.2

Digital Camera XD-Type Memory Cards.

Question.2.

How safe is it to let 'XD-Memory Cards' through these Security X-Ray Scanners ? ~ please appreciate now that its nearly 'strip-search' when one is going through 'Check-In' ~ no exceptions allowed.

If anyone has any recent experience's and suggestions ~ It would really be appreciated.

Brian.Conflow.

[stonemason]

Hi conflow recently went to Kenya and all my camera kit was xrayed around a dozen times out/inbound I didn't use the films I took so I cannot comment on those, however the friend I went with used film exclusivly ( I think 200 iso) and that suffered no ill effects from similar xray exposure to my own. I took 2000 images on my Nikon D70, stored all of them on my Nikon coolwalker and I had no problems at all. Having said all this make sure that all your films and kit travel as hand luggage as the xrays used on hold luggage are much more powerfull and quite likely to damage films. Hope this is of some help.

regards

stonemason

[Ken Cox]

Brian see

http://www.crucial.com/library/compactflash_cameras.asp

In addition, flash memory cards are not affected by the new, high-security X-ray machines used in airports today.

and

when i used to travel i would put film in lead bags designed for the purpose made by SIMA corp.

http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_get...masterid=760528

http://www.audio-discounters.com/fsu.html

but

to cya in today's world it is safer to get them developed wherever you are at a quick lab and if you missed a couple shots get them before you leave

ken

[Conflow]

Ken and Stonemason,

Many thanks for the quick replies and in response, the Film's I was using were AGFA ISA 400's Pro which were purchased in Germany and colour corrected for Alpine usage with deep shadow. (The Film is actually made for those conditions, it does not 'flare-out' neither has it any Colour-cast in Hi-contrast situations)

Agfa did warn me about Airport X-Ray Systems and they were not satisfied with Airport assurances as to "safe-scanning" even with the New Systems in use. The problem does not effect ISA 200's only 400's and 800's and appears as a 'Fog Cast' superimposed on the developed positives. They also advised storage in a Metal Container.

Ken,

It seems that you have been down this Road before ~ many thanks for the "Links" to Lead-Clad Film Containers, they are a lot more reasonable in price than what I would have imagined. 29 Dollars is not a lot for peace of mind and I take your point about...."where posible, get the Film's developed before you leave the destination"....

Memory Cards.

Again thank you both for the assurances that they are not effected by X-Ray Scanning...

Brian.Conflow.

[apepper]

I wouldn't necessarily trust the lead lined containers as I understand that the operators simply increase the dose of Xrays until they can see through them.

I've never had a problem with memory cards - or slower slide film for that matter - but one advantage with memory cards is that I take a portable CD burner and burn CD copies of the cards during the holiday, so I have a back-up.

-Andrew

Ken and Stonemason,

Many thanks for the quick replies and in response, the Film's I was using were AGFA ISA 400's Pro which were purchased in Germany and colour corrected for Alpine usage with deep shadow. (The Film is actually made for those conditions, it does not 'flare-out' neither has it any Colour-cast in Hi-contrast situations)

Agfa did warn me about Airport X-Ray Systems and they were not satisfied with Airport assurances as to "safe-scanning" even with the New Systems in use. The problem does not effect ISA 200's only 400's and 800's and appears as a 'Fog Cast' superimposed on the developed positives. They also advised storage in a Metal Container.

Ken,

It seems that you have been down this Road before ~ many thanks for the "Links" to Lead-Clad Film Containers, they are a lot more reasonable in price than what I would have imagined. 29 Dollars is not a lot for peace of mind and I take your point about...."where posible, get the Film's developed before you leave the destination"....

Memory Cards.

Again thank you both for the assurances that they are not effected by X-Ray Scanning...

Brian.Conflow.

[stonemason]

Andrew what portable CD burner do you use please?

regards

stonemason

[Ed Overstreet]

I've had memory cards, digital cameras, and a Digital Wallet (now-discontinued portable hard drive) pass through airport x-ray (carry-on) screening multiple times and have never had a problem. In spite of claims to the contrary by airport authorities, while I found ISO 100 and 200 film can pass through carry-on x-ray machines without fogging on a trip that doesn't involve too many screenings (exposure to x-rays, like exposure to light, has a cumulative effect on film), I found that ISO 400 film (Delta 400 in my case) did fog from x-rays on the same trip when ISO 100 and 200 didn't.

A company called Apacer (www.apacer.com I think) makes a portable CD burner that I have and recently came out with a newer model that will burn DVD-Rs as well as CD-R/RWs. This device is a bit too bulky and awkward to carry (and probably a bit fragile) to use on-the-go in a camera bag, but it works very well in a hotel room each evening if you have enough flash memory to get you through the day. I carry it on the aircraft with my other photo gear and have had no trouble with it being x-rayed as carry-on luggage, either. A big advantage of burning your photos to CDs or DVDs "on the fly" rather than using a portable hard drive, is that you return from your trip with your original images already on CDs/DVDs. When I used my digital wallet (I no longer do), the first thing I did when I got home is to make a backup set of the original photos on CDs. I no longer need to do that, so a step is saved. Also, a CD/DVD burner is infinitely expandable; if you use up the CDs or DVDs you brought with you, you merely need to find a store that sells blanks and buy some more. That's usually a lot easier and less expensive than shopping for another portable hard drive or extra flash cards. And of course CDs and DVDs aren't affected by x-rays (or by magnetic fields, either, magnetic fields can still be an issue with digital cameras, cards, and portable drives -- but as long as no one places these devices directly next to the CRT that drives the x-ray beam, magnetism shouldn't be an issue from airport security).

Also, with your images spread across multiple CDs or DVDs, you're less vulnerable to bad sectors or other hardware failure on the storage media than you are if you put all your images on a single hard drive ... I prefer to use multiple smaller flash cards instead of a single big flash card, for the same reason -- don't put all your eggs in one basket.

[alrobin]

when i used to travel i would put film in lead bags designed for the purpose made by SIMA corp.

Ken, I used to travel with my film in a couple of lead-lined bags in my carry-on backpack, and wondered why none of the security people ever wanted to see what was in that big black blob at the bottom of my pack. So, I asked a security agent in Montreal once why he didn't want me to open my pack. He took me around the counter and showed me the image on his monitor - there were my two "twenty-six" packs with all the film canisters lined up and showing quite clearly inside the lead bags. So, from then on I stopped bothering to use them.

[Ken Cox]

and i never had any fogged film either -- in those days 400 asa was as fast as you could buy in colour - tho' you could get some bw that was faster if you could handle salt and pepper grain

-- i used to push process tri x to 1200 and the grain was quite pronounced but viewable

but then we didn't have homeland security

imagine the gall of those companies selling those products since the 70's at least and not be raked over the coals by consumer reports or the like

:blink: :blink:

ken

[The oldie]

I read in the last year or so a learned article about the safety of digital equipment, cards, portable hard discs etc. which suggested that unlike film there was no risk at all. (Sorry can't remember the article source).

Last autumn(04) we had a nice med cruise with lots of stops and chances for pics. I carried an "Image Tank" portable hard drive (very neat and small) of 40 gb with me and downloaded the cards from the camera each night. It worked very well and because of increased security all the stuff had to go through not only airport security but large airport sized ship scanners everytime we left and reboarded the ship. No problem with any of the gear.

It really is a big bonus with digital cameras to be able to shoot away and not worry about running out of film. I carried 3 - 256mb cards which gave me lots of elbow room each day. Now with 1gb cards available the sky is the limit !

Regards to all the good people on the forum.

Alan in UK

[bmccammon]

I've never had any issues with X-ray scans using compact flash memory or the Epson P2000 portable hard disk. Some advice for film shooters that I thought made sense was to not only ask (insist?) on hand inspection of certain baggage but to make the job easy for the inspectors. The advice was to NOT put the film in lead bags but to remove it from the cardboard boxes and have the film canisters in clear, open view for the inspector. There's always the risk that they will still shove your bag through the x-ray but if you ask nicely and tell them that you've tried to make it easy for them to hand inspect certain content they may be more willing to take the time. Every negotiation is personality dependent, of course.

[Ken Cox]

fyi

quote from this week's

PC World's Digital Focus newsletter

Copy Pictures to the PC More Easily

If you know someone who still transfers pictures to the PC via a clunky USB camera cable, do them a favor and give the gift of convenience. I'm talking about a desktop media card reader. With a card reader attached to the PC, just remove the memory card from the camera and pop it into the right slot to copy pictures. Take my word for it: It's tons easier than trying to find the USB connector every time you need it.

If you're shopping for a card reader, make sure it has slots for all of the kinds of cards the recipient needs, like CompactFlash and Secure Digital. And make sure it uses USB 2.0, for faster transfers.

I like SanDisk's ImageMate 12-in-1 Reader, which has slots for just about every kind of media card ever invented. There's nothing you can throw at this gadget that it can't handle. It costs $35 at SanDisk's site:

http://find.pcworld.com/50696

I found it for less using PC World's Product Finder:

http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_get...=5090335/tk=dfx

Save Photos on the Road

Everyone is always looking for a good way to get photos off the camera's media card on an extended trip.

Solutions abound: You can bring along a laptop, or buy a special portable hard drive. Now there's a better--and cheaper--way, for anyone who has an Apple iPod Photo. Belkin's Media Reader for iPod with Dock Connector plugs into the docking port at the bottom of an iPod Photo and transfers images via pretty much any common memory card--CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard, or Memory Card.

The convenience of Belkin's device can't be overstated. It turns all that free space on an iPod into a place to securely keep photos, and transferring them to a PC is easy, too. It costs $50 at Belkin's site:

http://find.pcworld.com/50698

I found it for much less with our Product Finder:

http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_get...=1420746/tk=dfx

ken

[alrobin]

Good advice, Ken!

I bought an IPod Photo with 30 GB of memory before our trip to Romania this summer, along with the Belkin converter for the plug-in to the camera, and it worked very well. It's also nice to have the little preview window for viewing your photos, and the ITunes mp3 content for entertainment while travelling. Gives you an excuse for not listening to your wife all the time!

The image transfer from the camera (Nikon D70), and the offloading to the pc when I got home worked like a charm. The main disadvantages of the unit are the small Li-Ion battery, and the fact that you can't easily (and cheaply) replace it once it dies.