I think you meant non-nitrate stock. Nitrate is the dangerous
one. There were several types of acetate. While the limited life
of nitrate was known for decades it was thought that acetate was
permanent. Turns out its not so, the stuff decomposes about as
much as nitrate.
There was considerable resistance to switching to acetate for
motion pictures because many thought nitrate looked better but
the severe fire danger of nitrate finally drove it out of use
especially for motion picture release prints. Once nitrate
becomes inflamed its nearly impossible to extinguish plus it
emits toxic gasses. There were many disastrous fires in motion
picture theaters and a couple in processing labs. AFAIK "Sunset
Blvd" was the last feature picture to be released on nitrate.
Switching was not so simple, for instance, the shrinkage rate
of acetate is different than nitrate so sprocket wheels in
printers, which run both raw stock and processed negative, had to
be adjusted.
On 3/5/2020 2:43 PM, Laurence Cuffe (Redacted sender cuffe for
DMARC) wrote:
Still thinking about what Film it might be.
Safety film might indicate that it is non acetate stock, i.e. it won’t catch fire.
Is it BW or Color?
is the image negative or positive?
could you post an image of the markings some where, even a phone picture of the edge of the film?
enquiring minds wish to know!
Brian Pritchard has a pdf on identifying old film up on the web, its under the Advice and Trying tab on his website:
http://www.brianpritchard.com/
and it might help you figure out what you have.
Best regards
Laurence Cuffe
