|
Nothing can go wrong as long as you take your camcorder on the plane with you- in a carry-on bag.
At some airports, the x-ray dosage for checked baggage is much higher- so it is better to be safe than sorry.
Your tapes are what you should be more concerned about.
I used to carry tapes in a lead-lined film bag with my carry-on bag, but
several security people at busy airports told me that commercial news crews
and others never use lead-lined pouches and instead just take their tape
through with the carry-on items. If you go with a lead-lined pouch you will
almost always trigger a hand inspection of the pouch, sometimes resulting in
a re-xray of the tapes without the pouch.
I asked this question to an aerospace engineer friend who worked in
radiation and he said most people never had any problems with tape when it
was hand carried through an airport x-ray. He had experience with what x-ray light does to film but its a different story with tape. Tape could only be
ruined if subjected to super- electromagnetic fields.
Now you may ask what about the new, sophisticated Explosive Detection
Systems (EDS) at airports now? Well, Sony came to the rescue and conducted tests using a variety of Sony magnetic tapes with varying degrees of susceptibility to erasure. It was found that the EDS in use at one airport
did not impact the magnetic recording on the tapes tested.
Last update: 07:03 PM Saturday, August 5, 2006 |
