Here is a classic collection of questions from the Photo News Network Forum other photographers have had to answer.

About ten years ago I met with a marketing person from an insurance company about shooting two environmental portraits. He asked, "Do I have to pay for the whole roll of film if you don't shoot it all?"-Chip Mitchell

"Just exactly how big is a 20x30-inch print?" -Franklin R. Jones

While waiting at the counter at a photo store, a woman with a box of 8x10 color paper started to slit the seal on the box with her car key. She explained to the clerk that she was just going to check if the paper was the right color. -Alan Weinerman

While working in a local photo supply store, I dropped a roll of film a customer handed to me. I said, "Oh, no! Now they'll be out of focus." I smiled, the customer smiled...but you know how the story ends: all the pictures were out of focus. I had the worst time trying to explain that it was not because I dropped the roll. -Bryan J. McKean

Some of my favorites: "Will I seem fatter in your pictures?" "Can you make me look as if I'm not bald?" "Will your flash cause my drapes to fade?" -John R Graziani

Upon handing my client a 2-1/4 Polaroid proof to check: "But we need 8x10s!" -David Betito

When I was a photo editor at The Image Bank in the early 80's, a VP at Kodak in charge of processing Kodachrome in Fairlawn, NJ told me a customer had double-exposed an entire roll of Kodachrome. As was their policy, they returned the roll with a note explaining the problem. The customer sent the film back to the lab with a letter asking if they could use a very sharp razor blade to cut the two images apart...-Jean Miele

Early in my career I worked in a photo print lab. A customer came in to have a photo of her deceased husband copied and retouched. In the photo he had a hat on, and she said she'd always hated the hat. Yes, we could retouch the hat out. "What color hair did he have?" I asked. "When you take the hat off, you'll see," she said. -Will Mosgrove

The doctor who delivered my son told me this. He had a professional photojournalist in the delivery room, gowned up and shooting his wife's delivery. He was shooting wildly as the moment came and the infant began to emerge. Happily, the baby came out quickly and smoothly, all in one motion. The photographer dad shouted from behind his green mask, "Hold it, hold it! Can you do that again, please?" -Gary Gladstone

"I had a client on a product shoot ask if I could shoot it from the front, but develop the film so that the back would show as well."-Dan Epstein

After a student had been taught in a photo course what she needed to do to process black-and-white film, she came back to the teacher with a roll that was completely black. The teacher asked her to tell him the steps she'd taken to process her film. She told him she'd gone into the film loading room, and with the light still on, placed the film canister and development tank on the counter, closed her eyes, opened the canister and loaded the film on the reel. -Wendal Kaukani

In the early eighties I worked in a large LA camera store, and the Canon AE-1 had just come out and was causing a sensation. We sold hundreds and they seemed very reliable. But one customer complained that her pictures were coming out blank or way too light. We asked her to bring the camera in so we could take a look. A quick inspection revealed the problem. When she first opened the back of the camera she had encountered a small piece of plastic (meant to keep the pressure plate unscratched) resting over the shutter curtain. On the plastic was printed, "Remove before use," so she took a pair of scissors, cut out the shutter curtain and threw it away. -Deborah Davis