Digital Cameras and Airports Scanres or X-ray...

A friend of mine flew today to Madeira and have send me following sms "Hi, my digital camera stop working after the flight , i've checked the bateries and CF card... i don't know what happened could be X-ray/scaners in the airport? please search on the internet for me..."
I personaly find that a remote probability but i don't know for sure...
what do you think?

Thanks!

X-Ray and magnetometer scans have never been shown to affect digital cameras or memory cards. Has he checked that the battery and card doors are both firmly latched?

i thought that an magnetometer was for looking under soil? i mean to map underlying soil layers........they use that at airports too? intersting i'd like to know more.........??

The scanners at the airports only affect film. Cameras, both analog and digital, are okay to pass thru the scanners/x-ray machines. But film will get hosed.

No chance the scanners wiped the firmware?

Especially film over 800 ISO. I always take those out and give them to the security people to search without going through the xrays.

I've lost count of the number of times my 10D and flash cards have gone through airport X-ray scanners.. It has to be at least 60 times. I've had no problems..

Did your friend take his camera on as carry-on, or did it go into his checked in luggage.
I heard mentioned that the airports use a different scanner on checked in luggage.
If that is the case that may be the problem.
I'm just guessing.

Brian

Not at the airport but the post office is experimenting with some very powerful machines that will wipe flash memory. That means your CF cards, cell phones, and the firmware in a camera. There is a threshold where the floating gates in flash memory get their charges modified by ionizing radiation. Newer flash uses multi-level cells to store more data and they are more sensitive than older technology. Your common airport equipment is well below even that level. Let's hope they don't put these machines on line or move them into airport baggage areas. I think these particular machines were being used at specific targeted sites where they had reason to believe a more sophisticated threat existed. (US Capitol Building?)

Are you sure he didn't fly over the north pole during a solar storm?

Doug

Who's to say that the X-Rays can't, and don't affect electronics. My suspicion is that they do, but no one wants to admit it and claim responsibility for the damage that they're doing. When I worked at Apple Australia, I had a customer call in about a laptop that stopped working after going through the X-rays at Sydney Airport. The motherboard had been fried. If it can do that to a laptop...

Dave

My last few years at the airline that I worked at I did software analysis for them. This job required me to be in the air constantly working with vendors in other cities. I averaged something like 4 flight legs per week for the last couple of years. Most times I had two laptops with me and a camera with me quite often as well. Sometimes they were checked and other times they went on as carry on. This included airports in Canada, United States, Europe and Asia so my stuff saw a variety of xray units. Other departments worked with the various government agencies in all countries that we flew into to verify the safety of xray units on passengers. We had to do this so that we could put notice on our website on in ticket jackets if there were any dangers to any effects that passengers might carry. This was to satisfy liability concerns.

There is no evidence to indicate that airport xray levels, either those at the passenger screening points or in the baggage areas, affect laptops, digital cameras and their storage media. Motherboards fry and other electronic items quit working for a variety of reasons but to perhaps it is just a coincidence of timing that they saw an airport. I had a desktop computer that lost its motherboard, I certainly can't blame this for it.

That's what a metal detector is . . .

Doug,

would you happen to have a source for that bit of information?
I googled for it, but to no avail.

Best regards,
Andy

Sure Andy,

Here is the report on the "sanitization" system:

http://www.i3a.org …_titan_testing_​report.pdf

Wow ... thank you, that's an interesting read ...

Here's another interesting link ...http://www.titan.com …releases/news_0​52803.html
'Sanitization' actually means that any anthrax spores or any other pathogens sent by mail will be killed off

I assume a lot of mail-order companies would not really appreciate if the plastic parts on products they send out by USPS turn yellow and electronics are fried because of the irradiation in that device...

Another useful link: Committee for Integrity in Transportation of Imaging Products (ITIP)

Best regards,
Andy