Originally Posted by
sweetsleep
I was assured on my call that lenses should be fine in carry on as they are not "electronic".
I hope everyone's experience matches what you were told on the call, because some lenses do have electronics in them. So I'm concerned that it may depend on the agent on the scene knowing / not knowing that some lenses have electronics as to whether they force you to check them. Ie, is this published policy, or was this just a phone agent's assumption (based on not knowing that some "smart" lenses do indeed have electronics in them)?
Though of course only a tine fraction of the lens is electronics, even on those lenses that do have electronics in them.
Originally Posted by
Gino Troian
I only have a small film Nikon 28ti camera, but they insisted I checked it with my laptop. Fragile stickers were also put on the box. I think you should be fine checking in the body and keeping the lenses on board, as lenses are usually quite more expensive than DSLR bodies.
A Nikon 28ti has a very obvious flash on the front, and so I think most anyone would judge that to be "every electronic". (A flash unit requires way more battery power than a film camera with just a meter and no flash.)
Oh, and that analog display that allows you to "hip shoot" better, wow, to someone who doesn't know what that is and doesn't examine it carefully, that looks too much like a timer, and who wants something with electronics and a timer going into the cabin of a plane?
So I'm not sure whether your 28ti experience shows that
all film camera bodies are subject to gate-check, or not.
As to expense of body vs lens:
If you want film SLR lenses to work on your DSLR the same way as they did on a 35mm SLR, you need a full-frame DSLR. Price full-frame DSLRs, and you'll see that in that case the DSLR body may be more expensive than most lenses that most people are likely to carry-on (though of course it depends on
how many lenses you carry on vs how many DSLR bodies).