Film is Dead for Overseas Travel…

There are some items not permitted to be shipped by air, such as Lithium batteries. Maybe label your film with the proper label to prohibited air shipment. Most cargo transported by ship arrive in a week or less.
 
Thank you to the OP for this timely post. I'm currently planning my annual trip to SE asia. I always take a load of film. I typically don't care about xray screening since I have never seen any ill effects over years of travel with film in my carry-on. This thread completely changes things for me and I'm very much tempted to leave my film Leica at home and just stick to digital instead. Or at the least seriously consider picking up a used digital leica/mirrorless
 
Here in the USA I have always found the TSA people very helpful, they understand the X-ray dilemma. Now Europe is a different story. The British make it a passion to be awkward, they flatly refuse to hand check film, even when I had just got off a plane arriving in their country. They love to help ruin someone else’s day in my experience, one told me I could have made the Kodak unopened film wrappers and put something dangerous inside them. He was smiling when this exchange took place. After requesting to speak with the man in charge, he said if I refused to have it X rayed, he could put it in the hold, again with a smirk on his face. The French are better but it depends on who you meet. Go to the Far East and expect trouble, they hate Americans with a passion and let you know it.
Now anyone thinking that you can ship or fly film back from abroad, without it being X rayed is living in cloud land in my opinion.
 
jsrockit said:
Hmmm, how does freestyle and B&H (among others) ship film all over the world?
Click to expand...

Strict security measures tend to apply to passenger crafts because they are targets for terrorism. On the other hand the terrorism risk is low for cargo planes so courier parcels only get random scanning and do not get the heavy X-ray dose like passenger airlines.
 
jsrockit said:
Hmmm, how does freestyle and B&H (among others) ship film all over the world?
Click to expand...

They have absolute assurances within their supply lines and of course, insurance to take care of any mishaps. But in reaching out directly to both B&H and Freestyle, they are also 100% confident in getting film to their customers globally without hesitation.

Furthermore, lots of people ship film successfully via private sales globally using ebay, I have done so for years without any issues on the receiving end.

I heard back from a very famous (and favorite) B&W fine art Hasselblad shooter today and up to receiving my email, he had not even heard about the new CT tech in use, was very appreciative of my reaching out.

He basically offered similar options that have already been mentioned along the lines of buying film in or near the destination and even having it processed in the same country if logistics allow.

I don't want film to be dead for overseas travel as my title implies. But I think in order for it to not gain what could be a widespread notion of being too much of a pain to be worth it, we need an entity to work on our behalf to coordinate the data points and the viable logistics specific to our proposed trips.

I'm going to to figure out how to shoot 400-500 rolls of 120 film in the Faroe Islands, I'll be more than happy to share how I pull it off.
 
KM-25 said:
I'm going to to figure out how to shoot 400-500 rolls of 120 film in the Faroe Islands, I'll be more than happy to share how I pull it off.
Click to expand...

If you group 10 Faroese to a single 6x6 frame you've got the whole populace covered with 416 rolls, leaving a confortable 84 rolls for the striking landscape.
 
"Go to the Far East and expect trouble, they hate Americans with a passion and let you know it."
After living in Asia for nearly 40 years, and being a film user myself, I must disagree with this hostile generalisation, Jmpgino. Have had nothing but good experiences at airports here. Hand checks are done with no hassle. Have yet to see any of these dreaded CT scanners here in BKK, but one day, perhaps.
 
chasfreeland said:
"Go to the Far East and expect trouble, they hate Americans with a passion and let you know it."
After living in Asia for nearly 40 years, and being a film user myself, I must disagree with this hostile generalisation, Jmpgino. Have had nothing but good experiences at airports here. Hand checks are done with no hassle. Have yet to see any of these dreaded CT scanners here in BKK, but one day, perhaps.
Click to expand...

I have travelled regularly all over Asia for the past 20 years. Most countries will hand check film if you insisted. In China the people manning the security stations tend to be very young women and often don’t know what the heck is film. They’ll let it pass more out of boredom. HK always hand check film, Taiwan will if you ask nicely but Japan is iffy depending who’s working, and Korea hardly ever. They take security seriously; once I was interrogated for 20 minutes because I was travelling on a one way ticket from Seoul to Tokyo without any checked in luggage. Asian countries have yet to install the new CRT scanners so I usually don’t bother with hand checks.
 
"Japan is iffy depending who’s working . . . ." Personally, I've never had a problem in Japan, Rayt. I was travelling there at least twice a year, pre-Covid. But, I must say I was travelling biz-class, so shorter security lines probably made a difference.
 
I have been watching this story since it emerged in late 2019.

Given the 'notices' from Kodak and Ilford, can't really imagine the future of film/airports is good.

I only use film cameras and rarely had any trouble in the past, often my 100asa films would go thru 5-6 scans on each trip. This is due to Dublin not having direct routes to where I need and want to go, so it's always via France, Holland, Germany or the USA and once via Canada. Asking for hand scan was okay in US/Dublin/Shannon/Paris but not elsewhere. Can't see this getting any better.

Amsterdam was one of first airports to bring in the new CT Scanners and while KML often send me emails etc - I put it to them about these scanners and film, they correctly said it's a matter for the airports and not the airlines, I replied that I can't use an airline that goes thru those airport.... and the list grows as airports used the low passenger times of pandemic to re-equip their terminals.

Mentally I've been preparing to avoid those airports, but I think it's futile. So what is a film camera user to do? In truth no one yet knows. Perhaps the good day are behind us. I would like to travel again - Ireland has a lot to offer, but there is a need to go elsewhere and most people I know and like live elsewhere outside of here. Can't imagine not going with a camera and film, and I'm one of those without digital !

To think I can only safely use film cameras in Ireland is very limiting. Sure I can buy film abroad and maybe get it processed, did this in Canada and Costa Rica and US - but in those times film was plentiful and good labs were easier to find - even while on holiday. This is one new headache now for future travels....
 
Finglas said:
Asking for hand scan was okay in US/Dublin/Shannon/Paris but not elsewhere. Can't see this getting any better.
Click to expand...

Not only asking, but also demanding is always ok. So far there's been a reason for airports to deny a hand-check: lack of impact to the film from the scan.

I've asked and demanded hand-check in those instances I've had pushed film or I was doing multiple flights.

If/when there is a legit dilemma with films and new scanners, I'm thinking airports will pay attention to this.

In addition to airlines, also airports are competing for customers. At least they do so in the civilized world, I'm less sure about over securitized developing countries such as the UK :)
 
It's a very sad state of affairs. But in the OP's position, it seems to me that the path is clear: High stakes demand certainty. Order film to be shipped to the destination if you can't figure out shipping that's certain to be safe yourself. You could sell your stock form your fridge, somehow people pay just about as much for expired films as for new. Process there. What's a few extra days for processing in the total cost of this trip? Next best would be gambling your exposed film on many packages sent home as you go.

Now for shorter trips, this will be even more difficult... I'm not looking forward to travel after Covid as much has I could... may have to go digital or super slow film/tripod. This sucks.
 
jmpgino said:
This crowd suggests buying lead lined bags, I suppose the scanning operator would make the bags be hand checked. They always want my Hasselblads looked at after seeing then during the scan process.
Click to expand...
Lead lined bags are the worst idea ever. No, using such a thing won't make its content hand checked but on the contrary it will be deeply and strongly scanned at the risk of having the films veiled even at airports still equipped with conventional non-CT scanners. Plus, it will get on the security checkpoints people nerves and they may very well decide to just hold the bag aside and confiscate it, telling you to go ahead without moaning and PDQ. Lead lined bags are a problem not a solution and trying to use them at an airport where the new CT-scanning machines are installed is going to make the problem become worse. A definite no-go.

The only solution with CT-scanners is hand check, by no means should the films go through them. So it has clearly become a blind play lottery, you have no idea of what will happen until you are at the security checkpoint talking with the people working there.

My cameras very often have been visually inspected too, they wanted to look through the lenses and inside the film chambers, but this didn't help to have my films hand checked and quite frankly I preferred that nobody got at my films, because I had no interest at this with 100 & 400 ASA films and conventional scanners. I wonder whether "hand check" of films, according to security people, could not become a visual inspection of the whole film length. As stated above, very few if any of the security checkpoints people may know what the heck film is, and even fewer may know that film must not be exposed to light.

Can be that safely travelling by air with a stock of films is something that is slowly but surely going to belong to history. We'll see how things will turn out, but I'd not be too optimistic.
 
Highway 61 said:
Lead lined bags are the worst idea ever. No, using such a thing won't make its content hand checked but on the contrary it will be deeply and strongly scanned at the risk of having the films veiled even at airports still equipped with conventional non-CT scanners. Plus, it will get on the security checkpoints people nerves and they may very well decide to just hold the bag aside and confiscate it, telling you to go ahead without moaning and PDQ. Lead lined bags are a problem not a solution and trying to use them at an airport where the new CT-scanning machines are installed is going to make the problem become worse. A definite no-go.

The only solution with CT-scanners is hand check, by no means should the films go through them. So it has clearly become a blind play lottery, you have no idea of what will happen until you are at the security checkpoint talking with the people working there.

My cameras very often have been visually inspected too, they wanted to look through the lenses and inside the film chambers, but this didn't help to have my films hand checked and quite frankly I preferred that nobody got at my films, because I had no interest at this with 100 & 400 ASA films and conventional scanners. I wonder whether "hand check" of films, according to security people, could not become a visual inspection of the whole film length. As stated above, very few if any of the security checkpoints people may know what the heck film is, and even fewer may know that film must not be exposed to light.

Can be that safely traveling by air with a stock of films is something that is slowly but surely going to belong to history. We'll see how things will turn out, but I'd not be too optimistic.
Click to expand...
Excellent post, and explains why I would not choose a film camera for holidays involving flights (however with the Pandemic I have no intention of sitting in an aluminium Petri dish). For holidays I’ll choose digital, and probably take a camera I can afford to lose or have damaged. Not my Leica and expensive lenses.
 
I wouldn’t want to rely on trying to get my film hand checked while butchering languages I don’t know via google translate. This is a tough scenario for film users whose main photography occurs when traveling. Thankfully I’m not a travel photographer.
 
I asked Changi Airport/Singapore where the new generation scanners have been installed. Changi is the largest travel hub in SE Asia. They replied to confirm that their hand luggage scanners are 'perfectly film safe'. They also confirmed that travelers can request a hand inspection of their film. Cheers, OtL
 
Similar to OtL, I emailed the 4 airports in UK I use the most (Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Heathrow). Liverpool and Manchester replied so far.
Liverpool said that their current hand luggage machines are safe for films. If the passenger suspects not that be suitable for X-RAY to have an officer informed as they offer other imagining scanners and manual inspection.

Manchester airport (which is one of those suspected having CT scanners) replied
"If your film(s) are not suitable for x-ray screening our security officers can conduct additional security checks so these particular items can avoid going through the x-ray tunnel

I am waiting for the other two airports to respond. I will update with their response.

We need to be more vocal about the issues of CT scanners on film, younger and younger staff are employed, some have never seen a film canister before.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom