I make no secret of the fact that I absolutely dislike polyester film stock.
Unfortunately we were stuck with the bloody stuff against our wills in the Cinema and at home.
Okay so it does not fade as much if at all when compared with Acetate stocks. A plus in its favour. Nor does it suffer from V.S.
Okay it does not break or snap so easily as the Acetate stocks and is somewhat thinner. Another plus in its favour.
It is for the second reason I grew to loathe handling and working with that stuff on a daily basis.
One of its main problems was that during a film wrap around the film transport speed control module ( the brain )
it just will not give a clean snap or break.
Instead it would just stretch and crease taking out and damaging many feet of film in the process.
In some instances it will and did pull the film path rollers and guides out of line on the projector head
mechanism and the film platters.
No fun when you have to get a show back on the screen as fast as possible. Time was lost re-aligning
the rollers and guides before having to manually cut the stuff and splice it together again before a rethread.
Also this stuff is extremely sensitive to static electricity build up on the print. One of the main causes of the
film wrap around.
Regardless of how well the Projection Box temperature and humidity was kept this stuff just caused a lot of
problems we could do without in the long term. More so if you had 9 + Screens to look after and keep to running times.
Good old Acetate would just give a nice clean " SNAP ! " during a film breakdown and all it took was a quick splice and
we were back on the screen again in a few minutes.
The only thing estar stock is good for is hanging yourself with or towing cars or tugboats because it will not snap or break that easy.
Try it sometime. Get a friend to have a tug of war with a length of it and see if you can get this plastic shit to break.
Remember to wear safety gloves or it will tear your hands to shreds. hahahahaha !!!!
Or if you are feeling really adventurous feed some of it into your projector mechanism while it is running and just watch what it does to your projector.
P.S. In an extreme situation it could actually leave the film platter due to its unbreakable nature and we would end up
with thousands of twisted and curled and bent film on the floor. I hate the bloody stuff !!

Great for Super 8mm though David!

All of plusses you mention with none of the minuses!
Give it me any day rather than acetate.

Always fun when rewinding the 35mm especially when there was a "Nick" in one of the sprockets cut your fingers if you weren't carfull.the stuff would stretch as you say David it would bend crease but clean snap never ever in a month of Sunday's .
But like you say it does have some things going for it😄😄🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞🎞📽📽

Gwyn / Andrew ... Despite of its + points I still hate the bloody stuff though.
On that issue I will not budge. A huge heap of plasticky shite I would love to burn
off the face of the planet if it could burn as easily as Nitrate stock that would be a dream
come true for me. Imagine me as the Projectionist behind the screen near the end of Tarantino's
"Inglorious Basterds " . Hahahahaha !!!!

Isn't Gone With The Wind on Polyester David?

Aye and I am not happy about that at all.
If Kodak and the rest of them had got their shit sorted out away back in the 1970s
when they knew about film fade and used low fade acetate stock I would not have to suffer
polyester stock at all. Cheap plastic crap that it is.

I'm surprised you even purchased it then David.

Low fade prints, as you know can be found on either stock.The stock makes no difference .

Polyester tends to pose far fewer problems to a projectors claw also as it is considerably thinner. If I've ever had any mither with an unsteady picture, it's always been acetate prints that cause the mither.

Sorry Andrew but my experiences of the poly stock is just the reverse.
I have had more problems with poly stock than acetate.
If anything poly stock will be harder on the claw due to its thinner but unbreakable nature.
Its harder stuff to run even on professional equipment.
Its not as kind to the mechanisms we found over the years and had to change our
sprocket wheels and intermittent sprockets more frequently than we did when acetate stock was King.
Now that's a fact. What they saved in film stocks ( the software ) they lost out on the mechs. ( the hardware )
Poly stock also wears out the film path gate tension guides more than acetate did.

Whats a Mither ? Never heard that one before.
Is it the female opposite of a Faither ? hahahahaha !!!

In my ideal film collecting world all prints would be on Low Fade IB TECH Acetate Stock with no V.S. present.

Oh well I can always dream !

Mither pronounced mythere, is a colloquial term from these parts meaning bother but with a more comedic slant to it.

It's got mither written all over it, is a saying we tend to use quite a bit around these parts.

It's harder and more durable David, thait i'll grant you, but because it's thinner, claw penetration really does have to be totally off the radar before it causes any mither using poly stock , I've found.

Aye!!! It sounds a bitty Scottish if you ask me.