Ensuring a Photo Finish to That Dream Trip

Freelance photographer Sergio Ortiz of Malibu was returning home from Russia, carrying about 60 rolls of film he shot there, when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred.

As he passed through newly tightened security checkpoints at airports in Helsinki, Finland (where his plane was diverted), New York and San Francisco, he panicked when inspectors refused to examine his unprocessed film by hand. Instead they made him take it out of the protective boxes and send it through X-ray machines that were “cranked way up.”

“I thought, ‘Good Lord, I’m going to lose 2 1/2 weeks of work,’ ” he recalls. But his worry was for naught. “Not one frame was damaged,” Ortiz says.

His experience illustrates the anxiety that stricter airport security standards are causing even for professionals such as Ortiz, who has 30 years’ experience traveling as a photographer and writer. No wonder vacationers are confused about how to get their film safely through the airport.

There’s no universal solution because there are many variables: the speed of the film (Ortiz’s use of relatively low-speed ISO 200 film may have saved his work), whether it’s in checked or carry-on baggage and whether it’s going through a U.S. or foreign airport.

But the experts offer guidelines on what you can do to safeguard your film. In general, putting it in checked baggage appears to be riskiest, followed by sending it through X-ray machines for carry-on luggage, then by having it hand-checked by inspectors. To be absolutely safe you can buy and process the film at your destination; X-rays won’t damage developed film. Or you can use a digital camera, which is not sensitive to X-rays.

Here are some options:

Least safe: Placing film in checked baggage. Airport scanners introduced during the last few years emit high-intensity X-rays designed to detect explosives in checked baggage. These X-rays may damage all types of film, according to the International Imaging Industry Assn., a trade group whose members include Eastman Kodak, Fuji Photo Film, Konica and Hewlett-Packard.

Although the so-called EDS, or explosives detection system, has been around awhile, deployment in the U.S. was stepped up after Sept. 11. The federal government wants all airports to have the systems by January.

In 1997 and 1998, two of the imaging association’s predecessor groups ran tests on several models of these scanners using film from ISO 100 to 1600 and disposable cameras.

The studies found the Examiner 3DX-6000, made by L-3 Communications in New York, fogged all types of film that passed through it by overexposing it an average of one f-stop and also caused graininess in the images. The more passes, the more damage.

The CTX-5000SP, made by In- Vision Technologies in Newark, Calif., created fogged bands on film rather than fogging the entire film, as the Examiner did, the study reported. Unlike the Examiner, not all film was affected, depending on whether it passed only through the CTX-5000’s regular X-rays or was selected for a high-intensity computer tomography, or CT, scan similar to those used in hospitals. The CT scan did the only visible damage. It irradiates areas of the bag that appear suspicious to the human operator or the computer, the report said. In general, the faster the film, the worse the damage, the tests found.

The association’s advice: “Do not put unprocessed film in your checked baggage.” That includes cameras with film in them, Kodak says in a useful guide on its Internet site, www.kodak.com.

Safer: Placing film in carry-on luggage. The scanners at airport security checkpoints in the U.S. emit a lower dose of X-rays than those used on checked baggage, experts agree. But even these can damage film under certain circumstances. Foreign airports also may use different machinery with higher X-ray levels.

There is some debate over the safety level of fast film. “Film speeds through 1000 are safe,” says Mark Laustra, managing director of aviation business development and strategic accounts for Germany’s Heimann Systems Corp., which makes a widely used scanner. (The imaging association agrees, as do many airport inspectors.) That covers most vacationers’ film types.

But to be still safer, the imaging association recommends that even low-speed film be hand-inspected “if subjected to multiple examinations.” On its Web site, Kodak advises that you ask for hand inspections if your film is ISO 400 or higher or will go through more than five X-ray exams because damage may be cumulative.

“I’ve never had a problem,” says veteran photographer Wolfgang Kaehler of Bellevue, Wash., who has visited more than a dozen countries this year. He says he has put film up to ISO 800 through scanners 20 or 30 times without damage.

Safest: Having film inspected by hand. To avoid X-rays entirely, get security guards to hand-inspect your film. To speed the process, use clear canisters or take film out of opaque canisters and put it into clear plastic bags.

This tactic doesn’t always work, however. Some foreign airports don’t allow hand inspections. “At Heathrow they always demand to X-ray,” says Santa Barbara photographer Nik Wheeler.

In the U.S. you are entitled to hand inspections, according to Federal Aviation Administration rules posted on its Web site, www.faa.gov/avr/AFS/FARS/far-8.txt. (Scroll down to Sec. 108.17, under “e.”) But even travelers who arrive with the rule in hand are often being turned down, reports Kodak spokesman Jim Blamphin.

Using protective pouches: Lead-lined bags are marketed to protect film from X-ray damage. None of the experts I talked to claims the bags protect all film under all circumstances. Their effectiveness varies by the lead’s thickness, film speed and X-ray strength, Kodak says.

The imaging association’s 1998 test showed that a double thickness of what it called a “standard lead-lined bag” blocked about two-thirds of the X-rays emitted by the Examiner checked-baggage scanner. It took at least four thicknesses to block “almost all” radiation, it reported. Kodak’s Blamphin does not advise using these pouches in checked baggage.

I asked Ilana Diamond, chief operating officer of Oakmont, Pa.-based Sima Products Corp., which sells lead-lined bags, about these results. She acknowledges the bags “do not provide 100% protection.” But she says her company’s XPF line, developed after the 1998 test, can protect up to ISO 800 film “with no visible damage” from checked baggage scanners.

Wheeler swears by lead-lined bags. “I’ve never had any film damaged through X-rays,” he says. Ortiz, on the other hand, says the only time his film was ruined by X-rays was 10 years ago in Peru--when he used a lead-lined bag.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.