Hi everyone. I'm a bit confused regarding TSA's stance for bringing portable electronic equipment through airport security.

I know all large electronics like laptops and camcorders need to be removed from your carry-on and placed in separate bins.

But how about portable CD players, digital cameras, and compact discs?

I'd like to take these three personal items with me on board my flight.

So would I have to take each out of my carry-on at the security checkpoint?

Please let me know what the current rule of thumb is for these types of small electronics.

I have never taken a portable CD player with me, but I do routinely carry a Nikon D90 and multiple hard drives in my laptop bag. The only thing I pull out is the laptop. I have never had a bag search triggered by the D-SLR, only by the hard drives, if I don't have them oriented in a specific manner when I put the bag through the x-ray.

I carry a large camera bag stuffed with multiple bodies and large lenses. Only rarely is it opened. The laptop I do take out and put on a bin while TSA works on therapy for their laptop phobia. (anything that might be hidden under a laptop could as well be hidden under 20 lbs. of camera gear)

I'd leave the CD player in the bag. Transiting a TSA checkpoint is always pot-luck but hey, guns and knives make it through. I think you are safe with a CD player.

Isn't it sad we live in a world -I mean country- where this is a legitimate questions?

you should probably strap them to your chest with silver duct tape - they will alarm better that way

The only place I had the camera searched was in Germany, and they only wanted to make sure it worked.

My CPAP always gets double checked tho - to this day I don't understand why when its CLEARLY a medical device. Damned TSA.

It really is!

You shouldn't have any problems with taking your CD player and camera past security though. I take my camera thru and most of the time I leave it inside my backpack. When I go on business and I take it with me... I throw it in my laptop briefcase.. Never had a problem

I always left my CD player in my bag without a problem, when I had one. Now for music I use an MP3 player.

My DVD player has always triggered a bag search when left in my bag, so now I put it in the bin, even if I've been told it wasn't necessary.

I've carried a D80 with good sized lens through security many times. Only once has it drawn inspection and that was in China--and the culprit was a box of batteries for the flash, not the camera itself. I have also carried a laptop on every flight since the early part of this millennium. I can't recall it ever drawing a TSA search, even with the various bits of bric-a-brack that stay in the bag.

In the pre-TSA era I have had my SLR looked at and she thought she had found something because she couldn't see anything through the viewfinder--how she could possibly not know that you're not going to see anything without the lens attached I don't know. I also had various hassles with film, I wouldn't be surprised if they were retaliatory for asking for hand inspection. It was obvious the people had no idea of how radiation actually works: They felt that since I wasn't carrying ASA 800 it was safe--never mind that the minimum of 3 exposures per trip drops the safely limit to ASA 266 and I always carried some ASA 400. I was also expected to boot my laptop once--something I could just barely do as the battery was in terrible shape. (I knew that when I left but I only needed it for plugged-in use so I didn't care.)

The only place I really had issues asking for hand film inspection was Greece, though more than one US/TSA screener was unhappy about hand inspection (and another US screener actually started to pull the film out of the 35mm canister - but his colleague stopped him).

They're not exactly hiring TSOs from the deep end of the gene pool...