Travelling with Film

marcuspeddle · Oct 17, 2008

My wife and I have started travelling overseas every summer vacation to escape the heat of Korea. I have taken digital cameras the last two trips but next year I want to bring a film camera. I will bring a variety of film such as colour negative film, black and white, and slide. The negative film I can get done almost anywhere in a couple of hours but the other films I will need to leave undeveloped until I get back to Korea. Let's say I expose a roll of slide film and it doesn't get developed until a month later. Will that be okay?

SilverGlow · Oct 21, 2008

Consider buying the film at your distination, and having it processed there too (no prints just negatives). In this way, your pictures have no way of getting corrupted during travel back to Korea. I did this when I left the USA for Spain many years ago, and it worked well for us. Upon arring back in Korea, have prints made there.

marcuspeddle · Oct 22, 2008

As I mentioned in my first post, I can get negatives developed anywhere but I am worried about slide film and black and white. Depending on my location, these types of films could take a week or more to get developed.

SilverGlow · Oct 22, 2008

marcuspeddle said:
As I mentioned in my first post, I can get negatives developed anywhere but I am worried about slide film and black and white. Depending on my location, these types of films could take a week or more to get developed.

Where are you going? Do they have appropriate labs that get the processing done fast?

Consider this: FedEx or special delivery your rolls back to your home in Korea. Put half your rolls in one shipment and the rest in the other in order to spread out your "risk". In this way, you don't have to be bothered with totting them around while traveling and going through the airport. We did this in 2006 during our trip to Italy, and it worked great.

Perhaps the one weak link in this is if carriers x-ray freight...I don't know....

Mike_E · Oct 22, 2008

FWIW

The time isn't as big a worry as the x-ray machines in the airport. Unless you are push/pulling you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Do some research for good labs in the country you will be traveling to and send them the film and have them ship the developed negatives to your home or drop box of your choice.

confused_in_the_darkroom · Nov 13, 2008

I recently travelled to France and brought with me a wide variety of films, some of them being high ISO's. The problem with transporting film through the airport, as Mike E said, is that the ex-rays will cloud any images that are on the film. There are film safe pouches that you can probably find online or in some photo shop. They're about $30 US, I think.

Evan