film question airport scanners URGENT

[bill mudd]

ok film question if anyone can help.....

just flew out of LAX on a plains run and was told that any film left in our "check in baggage" would be permanently damaged, while carry on film film under 800 iso was ok.....well low and behold we left film in the check in bags and now wonder IF it was really damaged

I've never seen this warning posted before and have some doubts about it really being true.

anyone? I hate to throw away all these rolls:

(6 rolls of velvia 100 color slide)
(4 rolls 400tmax black and white)
(3 rolls ilford 100 iso black and white)

then again Id hate to take em thinkin they would be ok.....and dont have the time to shoot a roll and develop to find out

 

[Jeff Snyder]

As far as I know, this only affects ISO 800 and higher films (ISO 1600, etc). If you're primarily using 100 speed film, I wouldn't worry about it. I think this has been around for quite some time as well... I remember being warned to not bring 800 speed or faster film onto planes back in the late 1990s.

EDIT: This was in terms of carry-on baggage. As noted below, any film in the checked bags may indeed by damaged.

 

[Eric Friedebach]

Checked baggage goes through a different screening process. According to the TSA website, your film has been damaged.

 

[David Wolfson]

It depends.... Most likely your checked bag was scanned through a CAT-type scanner. My understanding is that these semi-automatic machines have low and high-power modes. If the image recognition algorithm slices through something it wants to look at in more detail it goes into high power and/or rescan mode. Thus film in a camera may be more at risk than film in its original plastic container. That said, I'd either assume the worst for my critical shots or sacrifice a test roll where I shoot high contrast blacks to see if there's perceivable fogging.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Just another vote for "likely, yes". The check-in stuff is scanned using a much higher-powered Xray beam. You may have lucked out, but I wouldn't risk using the film on anything important.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Yes it will permiate your film, and from what I have heard it does not matter what ISO speed film it is. My mom had this same problem, while flying to the Canadian Prairies.