>>4502228It can go a few different ways. Some things from personal experience (at major US airports unless noted):
- Yes, never put film into checked baggage. Checked baggage scanners are powerful and will fry it.
- Have your rolls in a clear ziplock bag and ask for manual check at security, right when you get to the tray conveyor belt, not last second.
- Plastic canisters are fine, they might open some (or all) to check. They will open the paper retail boxes, so just unbox them at home to save time (and space).
- About 7 out of 10 times they will swab the film then run the swab through the analyzer machine for explosives.
- If the analyzer flags it, the film goes into the scanner, period. Don't bother arguing. You may also be getting lots of suspicious stink eyes from now on.
- I don't know why but it's usually my bulk loaded film that gets flagged, maybe traces of darkroom chems on the reused cartriges trigger it.
- The swab test is not always consistent, more then once I had it fail on outbound trip, but pass at the other airport on the way back.
- Either way you might need to wait up to about 5 extra minutes (over 10 in few extreme cases) if there's no one available immediately to do manual check or run the swab analyzer (I guess not everyone is trained or permitted to), so if you're in a rush then just don't bother.
- French are either absolute cunts about it, or just useless and clueless (this mostly goes for the second language "French" iykwim). Last time I was connecting at CDG (including terminal transfer from non-Shengen to Shengen area) it got to the point that they were calling le gendarmerie because they really got under my skin with the cunt factor and I wouldn't let go. Luckily some old grumpy (but White) French supervisor (who was probably the only other person there who ever saw a camera film) stumbled upon, took a two second glance at the bag of film and waved me through. Fuck the French.
tbc.
