Why not ask British Airways? You'll probably get the best answer there.....

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Also, I have cards for my images. Not sure if there will be a good way to back them up. Can they stand one pass through an X-ray machine?

TIA

Film can be damaged, specially if it goes through multiple machines. Cards are immune to X-Rays - at least at the intensity of airport machines. Not to worry.

On the other hand, backup is a good thing. Though cards rarely become corrupted, they can be lost. To avoid corruption, never withdraw a card while the camera is writing to it, and after transferring image to the computer, reformat the card in the camera. Simply deleting the images without the reformat can cause the card to become fragmented and could cause problems in time. A reformat restores the card to exactly what the camera wants to see.

There are a variety of devices with built in card-readers and hard drives that you can off-load to. While these devices are supposed to be quite robust, I would hate to trust all my images from a mission critical shoot to a single-hard drive.

One can now buy a small laptop for not a whole lot more than these devices, complete with CD/DVD burner. With it you can off-load your image files to it each night and burn a disc as added backup. If it is a trip-of-a-lifetime, consider making two discs, keeping one in your luggage and mailing the other home to yourself.

Since a laptop is a full blown computer, it can be used as such for many things. It also lets you preview your images on a screen large enough for decent viewing.

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Why not ask British Airways? You'll probably get the best answer there.....

I did. They said they couldn't answer the question until I was ready to fly.

Was hoping to avoid the extra expense and weight of a computer. Travel to Europe is 51 lbs luggage total on British Airways. So, pretty conscious of what I'm taking along.

Thanks for the replies!

Well, I'm not sure that taking a laptop is a good solution, either. Check out this recent post on photo.net (be sure to click on the link):

http://photo.net/photography-news-forum/00Pyei

If one wants to avoid all the potential unpleasantness of international air travel, one must stay home. A small laptop for backing up your images may be searched, but not necessarily. For that matter as one of the correspondents pointed out, buying a one-way ticket with a debit card an hour before the flight drew the attention of the gate inspectors.

Initially, no distinction was being made between the folks at the gate and customs officials. Luckily it was soon cleared up. While both can make your trip less pleasant, they have different goals, different methods, and much different levels of authority. If your profile triggers the customs officials to mark you as a terrorist, insurgent or pornographer, expect to have your laptop checked thoroughly. However the guy with the wand at the gate only wants to make sure that the laptop does not contain explosives. The content on the drive is of no interest except to customs and immigration.

I nothing triggers the flags, unless it is a slow day, and the official is feeling particularly mean, most people will simply be waved through. In any case, it would not be a sufficient risk that I would leave a means of backing up the pictures of a lifetime at home. Almost anything a traveler carries could become a reason to be inconvenienced in this age.

I remember when travel was fun.

My friend is now (I think) going to take his laptop. Will try to work something out there. Since I shoot RAW, will have to install some RAW software to make that happen.

I think the monopod will be okay.... it weights a lb and is about 19 inches long....but you never know what they think could be a weapon. So, unless I want to take it to the nearest British Airways office, I will have to "wait and see." (even then, I suspect different people may view it differently!)

I do remember when travel was a lot easier (of course it was all domestic.... this is my first trip abroad!!)

Well for a bit of follow up-- the mono pod was checked only once. When flying a domestic flight to the airport where I would catch my non-stop to England, I had to show them the mono pod. They looked at it for at least 3 seconds before they decided it was okay. Otherwise, went to England and came back without a second glance from anyone. As stated above, the cards were fine with X-rays and I did back the pics up to my friends computer before returning. Overall, a very satisfying experience!

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

I leave for the UK next week and decided that carrying my lap top was not convenient. I have choosen to take the Epson P 6000 with 80 GB of storage for my photos. It only weighs a pound and will handle RAW form both my Nikon and Canon cameras. It is compact and portable.

Have fun....I sure did. For my next trip I will certainly look into other forms of storage devices.