Re: filmscanners: fogged film

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

The last time I was in the states, about a year ago, I left from an
airport in Syracuse NY.  When I asked for hand inspection of my camera
bag and film, the two elderly gents, who looked like they were retired
FBI to me, said they wanted to have the equipment chemically "sniffed". 
They took some pads of white clothlike disks, looking a bit like the
cotton cosmetic pads some use for makeup removal, and wiped down some of
the film canisters, the camera body, the bag, and parts of lenses.  They
then took these pads and placed them into some sort of device that
apparently "sniffed" these cloth disks for residue from nitrates or
other potential explosive components. 

Luckily, I'm not much one to get into fireworks of any kind, so I guess
my camera equipment was "clean" and they let me through.  They seemed to
enjoy playing with their toys, however, and I told them how much safer I
felt knowing they were being so careful.

Art

Lynn Allen wrote:
> 
> Art wrote:
> 
> >Usually they won't even both[er]
> to open the canisters, although sometimes they will.
> 
> It may (or may not) be worth mentioning that smugglers have been using film
> canisters for quite some time. Occasionally, there's going to be an
> overzealous customs inspector, especially when you travel from country to
> country (and Norman listed 3 US Ports of Call--Miami, Puerto Rico, and The
> Virgin Islands). If he carries a Jamaican passport, that would make him an
> automatic suspect (albeit unfairly).  This doesn't deal with the problem at
> hand, though, which is the salvage of Norman's underwater pictures.
>