New (as of 2019) airport CT scanners

wiltw said:

I have two rolls of exposed and unprocessed NPH 400 rollfilm which I will be deliberately placing inside my carryon luggage, with the hopes that I identify that the carry-on is indeed going thru a security CT scanner at the gate, and I will deliberately NOT ask for hand inspection in choosing not to bypass the CT imaging. We are leaving SFO, travel thru Toronto, to Lisbon outbound this later week. Then returning Lisbon thru Montreal to SFO two weeks later. I will have roll 1 go thru CT only outbound, with roll 2 going thru CT only upon return if I encounter CT in both directions. so that each roll independently will represent a different CT scan in a different location.

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I can confirm that I was recently able to deliberately pass one roll of exposed 120 film thru the security CT scanner at Lisbon airport, returning via Montreal to San Francisco. A second rollfilm in clear plastic zip bag was handed over to the security personnel for hand inspection to bypass CT exposure, and the request was immediately complied with zero discussion of the request.
Having just gotten back from my travels, I have not yet had opporunity to submit my ISO 400 color neg rollfilm for processing, but will post again when I have processed film and prints in hand. The film was not subject to CT exposure outbound from San Fransicsco.

I traveled from Keflavik, Iceland (KEF) to the US on 14 May. All the scanners appeared to be older-style simple X-ray machines (not CT) but I had no issues obtaining hand inspection for my 20 rolls of 120 film.

Same experience just now on our flight from Iraklion, Greece/Crete.

koraks said:

Same experience just now on our flight from Iraklion, Greece/Crete.

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Good to know as I am probably going there in October. Last time (2019) it wasn't a concern.

Thus far since resuming travelling post-Covid in Feb 2022 I've had no troubles with film. I've either encountered older X-ray scanners or had my films hand inspected without any problem...in some cases I've had the hand inspection even though older X-ray scanners were in use.

wiltw said:

I can confirm that I was recently able to deliberately pass one roll of exposed 120 film thru the security CT scanner at Lisbon airport, returning via Montreal to San Francisco. A second rollfilm in clear plastic zip bag was handed over to the security personnel for hand inspection to bypass CT exposure, and the request was immediately complied with zero discussion of the request.
Having just gotten back from my travels, I have not yet had opporunity to submit my ISO 400 color neg rollfilm for processing, but will post again when I have processed film and prints in hand. The film was not subject to CT exposure outbound from San Fransicsco.

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I would appreciate input from folks in the US about labs that have good quality control in color processing...it has been a very long time since I used any professional labs in the SF Bay area to process my film, and I know how difficult it is to find labs with much lowered volume of processing, which maintain good quality control.

I accidentally carried a single roll of Kodak Vision3 50D through an airport CT scanner. The results are more pronounced than I had imagined:

You're looking at the leader of CT-scanned film (top) vs. a non-CT affected otherwise identical film (second row). Photos on the film are also affected as illustrated by the more bland, low-contrast and overall brown rendition of the CT-affected film (3rd row) vs normal color and contrast of the control film (4th row).
Some more details here, but the gist of it is all in the image above: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...-effect-of-ct-carry-on-luggage-on-color-film/

Trip report on another slightly different itinerary: PDX-JFK-AMS-MLA, returning MLA-AMS-DTW-PDX. There was nothing interesting on the outbound (hand check at PDX as usual, no problem), but the return involved a couple of hand checks.

MLA is a small airport, but a bit to my surprise it seems to be all CT (looked like the same Smiths Detection models that they use in PDX). They were a little surprised by the film but had an idea of what it was, and they just let me carry it through the metal detector with no hesitation.

No security on transfer in AMS, as usual.

DTW has a security checkpoint after passport control as you enter the country, with all CT machines (the round spaceship-looking ones with the blue glow). They understood the film and took it for hand check, apparently swabbed it while I was going through, and had it ready for me on the other end.

The film was all 120, but it didn’t seem to confuse anyone.

Malta is a great place for colour film. I burned a couple of rolls in Senglea and Mdina, then shot a roll of HP5+ in Mdina as evening came on. (Mdina is a city of high walls and narrow streets, and it gets dark fast—I went from “100 is almost too fast” to “400 is almost too slow” in about 15 minutes.)

-NT

Latest trip: ABQ-ORD-LHR-VIE and return.
Albuquerque has CT in the Precheck lanes (and I think the regular ones too) and are happy to hand-check
Heathrow Terminal 3 and 5 have CTs in the continuing travel queues. And were well practiced at hand-check (but not fast...opened each film can to swab, and despite an entire family ahead of me that retained belts, wallets, watches and who-knows-what-else to be discovered by the metal and mm-wave detectors, I had to wait) (another factor in favor of 120).
Vienna had old machines, as did O'Hare terminal 3 pre-check.

Dr. no said:

Vienna had old machines, as did O'Hare terminal 3 pre-check.

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I just flew out of Vienna yesterday (Terminal 3 I believe). They were happy to hand inspect my Delta 3200, but not my slower film. Most of the machines were simple x-ray machines, but they have several CT machines and were using them in test mode. They’d take a small group in the line and divert them to CT machine. They asked me, but I declined, and they were fine with that (I don’t know if they would have hand checked everything in the CT line so I didn’t want to chance killing 35 rolls I took over my vacation.)

I’ll also add that Budapest was a bit weird—signs saying you don’t need to remove laptops and touting new equipment, but the machines were old x-ray and they happily hand checked my Delta 3200.

I traveled through Frankfurt on May 1 with boxed unexposed 120 film. I asked for a hand inspection and got one with only minimal discussion. However when the film was swabbed at least one box triggered the swab test for ? Explosives ?

Needless to say the heavily armed guard stepped in and took control of the situation. He had no idea really about film and wanted to see a proof of purchase for the material etc which I didn’t have of course (i don’t live there - I’d been working in Germany for a couple of days). I had to pull out the camera, open the unloaded back, unwrap a box of film and describe how it all worked.

I guess there are false positives because my explanation sufficed and I was allowed proceed. I have no idea what could have caused the false positive on the hand inspection.

Interesting. Lets hope no manufacturers go back to using a nitrate base. Then the film could be an explosive...or close to it.

Ardpatrick said:

I traveled through Frankfurt on May 1 with boxed unexposed 120 film. I asked for a hand inspection and got one with only minimal discussion. However when the film was swabbed at least one box triggered the swab test for ? Explosives ?

Needless to say the heavily armed guard stepped in and took control of the situation. He had no idea really about film and wanted to see a proof of purchase for the material etc which I didn’t have of course (i don’t live there - I’d been working in Germany for a couple of days). I had to pull out the camera, open the unloaded back, unwrap a box of film and describe how it all worked.

I guess there are false positives because my explanation sufficed and I was allowed proceed. I have no idea what could have caused the false positive on the hand inspection.

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Many years ago I had similar happen in Los Angeles. And it just so happened that at the time I was working in an industry that included explosives and my camera gear was in the vacinity of those materials. The security listened to my story and the countermeasure was to remove every item out of my camera bag and test each one. While re-checking, a supervisor took my ticket and ID and "ran a few checks". All passed so I was given my documents and allowed to proceed along my merry way. The security guy indicated that false positives happen and that was one of them. All-in-all, it was just another 15 minutes of time spent processing through. Not really a big deal but it was surprising as nothing like that had ever happened before. There seemed little concen for why it happened so long as their extended check passed.