The Portland Metro Photographic News

Having managed amateur photo labs as well as a few camera shops, I was always amused by some of the questions we were asked and situations we encountered.  Although the questions seem funny, they were always taken seriously because they were asked in all sincerity.  Solving even these simple issues was the best way of making friends out of customers. 

To this day, I continue to remind myself that if I went to these customers' businesses where they are the gurus, I would probably ask questions that seemed just as funny and become part of their own "List of Strange Questions".  But as I look back on the questions and situations, they never fail to make me smile.   Here are a few that I won't forget:

• "Please don't develop this film if there are no pictures on it."  The customer was handing me a roll of Kodak 35mm Kodacolor film at the time.
• "I used a flash.  So why do I only get pictures of the back of people's heads sitting in the row in front of me at concerts?"  I probably received this question at least once each week.
• "I wanted pictures, but I got slides back instead?"  The film was Kodak Ektachrome.  Along the same lines was the customer who was upset because she received black and white pictures back from the lab instead of color.  (The film she used was Kodak Plus-X.)
• "Why did you crop the ends of my picture off in my 8"x10" enlargement?"  The film negative was a 35mm.  It's still all about proportions.
• "I used a flash, so why don't the pictures I take in a theater of a movie screen turn out?"  You still can't "light up" light.  I have also received the same question in regards to shooting fireworks on the Fourth of July.
• Students in one of my beginning darkroom classes were told to bring their required lab supplies to the second class of the session.  While I was doing my lecture "thing" at the front of the class, I noticed that one of the students had opened his 100-sheet box of Kodak Polycontrast paper and was leafing through the sheets of paper -- under the classroom light.  Apparently the package warning, "Open Only In Darkroom", was not heeded.
• The new darkroom student asking, "Why is my picture backwards?"  Or even stranger, "upside down".
• "Why are all the people in my picture green?"  The picture event was held indoors, and the photographer was using available fluorescent lighting with daylight film -- no flash.  White balance has always been around.
  
• "Why is there a flag pole growing out of my daughter's head in this picture?"  Well ... move the camera.
• "Why are all my snow scene pictures dark."  18% gray still rules.
  
• "Why are all my pictures blank?"  Lens cap not removed on non-SLR cameras.
• "Why are all  my pictures blank?"  The 35mm film was not engaged by the sprockets when loaded and never advanced.
• "Why do I get only half of a picture when I use my flash?"  Synch speed was set incorrectly.  This question was asked nearly every day.
  
• "I took 36 pictures, but you only processed 24."  You guessed it.  It was a roll of 35mm, 24 exposure film.  When the customer reached the 24th frame, he forced the film to advance to frame 25 and tore the sprocket holes.  So he never knew the film had reached its end.
• "Why do all my pictures have orange streaks through them?"  Upon further questioning, it was discovered that the customer had stored his camera in his car's glove compartment for the entire summer.  This took place in Illinois.
• "Why is my film 'sticky'?"  The customer was carrying her exposed film in her purse when her perfume bottle leaked onto the 126 Instamatic cartridge.  During the 70s, this seemed to happen on a regular basis.
  
• I once had a customer save all the peel-off, throw-away parts from a roll of Polaroid film, bring them to the lab and ask for reprints.

It was questions like these and the conversations they produced that made going to work enjoyable and always unpredictable.

Do you have a few favorites of your own?