By Nicholas Teo
On your way to your next holiday and planning to shoot film? You need to read this first
Let me get straight to the point. Film works by exposing light (from your lens) to a photosensitive coated film (errr the film, ofcourse). This is why you should not expose your film to light or else there will not be any image formed on the photosensitive layer.
Never put your film into checked baggage. You can kiss them goodbye if you did. I brought a roll of Ektar 100, a very slow speed film and it was seriously fogged beyond comprehension. Checked baggage scanner apparently uses a more intense X-ray (I'm not sure the physics behind this) to check your baggage. So instead bring them on your carry-on luggage into the plane
For those who are travelling, the airport security check requires you to put all your belonging onto the conveyor belt and onto the scanner. This scanner is uses X-ray, which has higher frequency than visible light and can penetrate through almost everything and that includes your metal film canister. Naturally this will affect your film in a sense that it is exposed to some kind of "light" so you will have a reduced exposure latitude on your film (loss of details in the shadow and highlights).
Airport scanners claim that films below ISO 800 should be safe to go through the scanner as the X-ray will not have an apparent effect on slower speed films but if you are travelling with ISO 800 or faster films then you can ask the airport security to handcheck your films. In my experience if you ask nicely then they will handcheck your films but do make sure there isn't any long queue line behind you as this may cause an inconvenience to other travelers rushing to catch their flight. It is also more likely that your film would be refused to be handchecked if you're carrying a lot of films so you really have to plan ahead.
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