One of the biggest worries of the film photographer is that of traveling with film. We hear horror stories about not being able to find film, uneducated airport personnel pulling out dark slides and exposing film — and the dreaded X-ray machine. I see photographers talking about film and X-ray machines all the time on Facebook, and what I find most interesting is that very, very few photographers, even the grizzled warhorses who have lugged 4×5 rail cameras over hill and under dale to Capture the Shot from the Right Place, even know what film looks like when it has been affected by an airport scanner.
Now, I don’t purport to know everything there is to know about this subject, but I always take precautions when traveling with my film cameras, and I have never had a problem. Oddly, though, I did borrow film from a friend one day when we were out shooting, and when I processed it, a bizarre pattern showed on it and it took me a while and consultations with a number of people to determine that this was actually x-ray damage. Here’s what it looks like:
