Spain

[ronlamarsh]

I am traveling to Spain in june and plan on taking my Rollei 3.5T and Zeiss contaflex.
Is there a good B&W film source either in Madrid or Barcelona? If not I'll carry my own. Second question: I know that the airport scanners in Europe are significantly turned up, so to speak, so what is the best way to get exposed film back to the US?

 

[Ian Grant]

I found a store in Madrid, would have to check a map, they had 120 film and even sold LF cameras second hand but had no idea where to get LF film Prices are higher than the UK and far higher than the US so take what you think you'll need with you.

Carry on scanners in Europe are far safer than those in the US, no hand inspections needed and they aren't given.

I flew through Barcelona & Madrid last month with 30 rolls of film, they were scanned at Izmir, Istanbul, Madrid, Istanbul and had already been scanned UK - Birmingham and Istabul before. Never any problems I do this very regularly.

Ian

 

[marco.taje]

I'll second Ian's opinion regarding airport scanners. Being a crew member myself, with my Blad in my bag, you can imagine how many scanners my exposed and unexposed film goes through. Never had any evidence of fogging (I'm talking about 400iso film).

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

In Barcelona, you have two choices for buying film - Casanova and ARPI. They're located approximately at opposite ends of La Rambla, ARPI at the harbor end and Casanova a couple blocks off the Plaza de Catalunya, across the street from the giant book/music/electronics superstore whose name escapes me at the moment. Casanova has I think better prices, and they were definitely more than in the US, but not radically more- maybe 10-15%. That was for 35mm color neg film - I didn't price black and white. I THINK Casanova has a branch in Madrid but don't count on it.

 

[Ian Grant]

B&W is at about double US prices sometimes more, I met up with a Spanish photographer in Barcelona and he buys from outside Spain, some films from the US.

Ian