I received a call from work one Saturday at the start of 2022, on Monday morning I was on my way to Cairo - Nikon FM2n in my backpack. Sadly, I already had a roll of Kodak Ektachrome E100 loaded in my camera, which was X-rayed on my way out of Heathrow Airport. Reading the Kodak website, I knew that one X-ray wouldn't cause much trouble with 100 iso film, so I cracked on and planned to finish the roll before flying home; hoping I'd wangle a hand-check on my return journey.
Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that security would X-ray my gear every time I entered my hotel, and to make matters worse I took a couple of internal flights too. All in, this roll of film was subjected to around a dozen trips through various X-ray machines. As such, when I sent it off for development, I wasn't expecting to recover any usable images from the foggy mess of acetate.
One can imagine my surprise when I received the slides in the post - usable images! Despite an obvious magenta colour cast which affects the entirety of the roll, clearly focussed along the top and bottom edges of the film, the emulsion itself it not overly fogged and retained ample colour saturation and contrast; perhaps owed to the already high contrast nature of E100. Discolouration ebbed as I progressed deeper into the reel, suggesting that the most damaging X-rays were encountered early on before I had exposed much of the film.
While I don't actively plan on subjecting my film to X-ray machines if I can avoid it, this accidental encounter has encouraged me to treat low ISO film less delicately when travelling - as I obtained usable images with interesting effects despite the relatively extreme mistreatment.