Photoshop or just a funny angle?

July 10, 2009 7:46 AM

This image of "A Mexican marine stands guard as 7000 Kg of seized marijuana are incinerated at the naval base in Guaymas, Sonora state, Mexico. seems way out of whack. Big gun, small marine... make it make sense...

I'm not exactly a gun nut but I'm didn't think there was a rifle with grenade launcher quite that large... what am I missing?

posted by tiamat to technology (29 comments total)

Possibly it's a 50 calber rifle.

See this picture.
posted by dfriedman at 7:49 AM on July 10

Its an illusion created by a fisheye or wide angle lens.
posted by nineRED at 7:52 AM on July 10 [4 favorites has favorites]

There is a perspective issue with the photo - look at the soldier's left hand vs the right hand. The photographer used an odd lens that is shortening the depth of field - the gun is being held at an angle towards the camera, but it appears flat.

It is still a rather large gun, but not as large as it appears.
posted by muddgirl at 7:53 AM on July 10

I vote "normal" sized rifle, small-statured marine and fisheye lens.
posted by de void at 7:58 AM on July 10

nthing wide angle lens.
posted by puritycontrol at 8:01 AM on July 10

I'm not exactly a gun nut but I'm didn't think there was a rifle with grenade launcher quite that large... what am I missing?

The gun in the photo resembles an M16A2, which Wikipedia tells me is 1m long. If I extend my left arm out sideways, that's about the distance from the tips of my left-hand fingers to my right-hand shoulder. So it's a fairly big rifle to begin with.

Combine that with a wide-angle lens (as nineRED suggests) and I could believe you'd end up with that photo.
posted by Mike1024 at 8:16 AM on July 10

Yeah. I agree with the lense thing.

Kind of off topic, but when they burn marijuana like this do they had something to the fire in order to make the smoke toxic or less desirable to maybe stand down wind from one of these things and just take advantage of the situation?
posted by djduckie at 8:19 AM on July 10

Another photo by the same photog of presumably the same guy, but from a side angle. (Hi-res version) You can see that the tip of the rifle is only about even with his chin, compared to over his head in the distorted photo.
posted by smackfu at 8:20 AM on July 10 [1 favorite has favorites]

Definitely not a 50 cal, you can tell instantly from the cartridge. Just a fish eye combined with a very small soldier. Look at his hands in relation to the grip.
posted by JJ86 at 8:27 AM on July 10

yup. it's the lens.
posted by TrialByMedia at 8:30 AM on July 10

Its just an M16. Theyre modular. He has a longer rifling installed and a larger air cooler like in this photo on the bottom.

Another photo here.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:32 AM on July 10

The fisheye has mostly enlarged the middle of the rifle. Compare the size of his left hand (and the canteen, for that matter) to the size of the right. Even though there is no indication from his stance that the left hand is significantly closer to the lens, it looks twice as big as the right hand. If the photographer hadn't lined it up just right, the barrel of the rifle would appear conspicuously arced from the distortion.
posted by bricoleur at 8:34 AM on July 10

Wide angle lens, short shooting distance and a large depth of field so the soldier and gun are in focus.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:34 AM on July 10

I did the same sort of thing in this photo with a 15mm fisheye on a full frame dslr.
posted by blaneyphoto at 8:35 AM on July 10

Check the height of the tree behind him too, in comparison to the one in smackfu's link - it's taken from a low angle with a fisheye lens by the looks of it.
posted by ArkhanJG at 8:47 AM on July 10

This may well also be because you're used to seeing US forces carrying M4 carbines, which are pretty small compared to this rifle, the much older M16A2, even though they have a similar profile.

US soldiers in Gulf War 1 carrying a similar weapon to this one.

US soldier in current conflict carrying an M4.

More recent weapons are smaller.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:06 AM on July 10

M16 / M4 size comparison.
posted by blaneyphoto at 9:11 AM on July 10

I retract my 50 caliber rifle statement!
posted by dfriedman at 9:25 AM on July 10

That's an M16A2 with an M203 grenade launcher attached.
posted by lullaby at 9:30 AM on July 10

djduckie: Yes, they often add tires to the piles to make the smoke noxious. So I've heard anyway.
posted by chairface at 9:38 AM on July 10

See How to Make Your Small Fish Look Like a Big Catch. Same effect, but the soldier isn't holding their gun out as much.
posted by maxpower at 10:01 AM on July 10

when they burn marijuana like this do they had something to the fire in order to make the smoke toxic or less desirable to maybe stand down wind from one of these things and just take advantage of the situation?

In Afghanistan: Canadian troops battle 10-foot marijuana plants

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.

Oops.
posted by lullaby at 10:16 AM on July 10

That's an M16A2 with an M203 grenade launcher attached.<>

This. It is a normal sized rifle with a 40mm grenade launcher. I used to have six of those.
posted by procrastination at 11:45 AM on July 10

I agree with everyone else that this is a normal-size weapon and perhaps a little bit of a diminutive soldier but that this is mainly the effect of a wide-angle lens. I disagree with those stating the lens must have been a fisheye lens because the horizon line is fairly straight. this was most likely shot with something akin to (if not outright the) canon 16-35L f2.8 lens. wide angle? yes. fisheye? no.
posted by krautland at 1:25 PM on July 10

Wide angle lens, definitely. You can see that the butt of the rifle looks pretty normal against his body, but the muzzle is large. Whatever is closest to the lens will look abnormally large.

Not a fish-eye, unless the fish-eye part was correct (you can do that, which is amazing to me).

Kind of a crappy photographer because of all this, IMOH.
posted by sully75 at 2:39 PM on July 10

Yep: Definitely just the lens. Definitely an m16 with m203 grenade launcher. I used to blow up terr'rists with these all the time in AMERICAS ARMY, your tax-funded online shooter/propaganda.

You wouldn't carry around a 50 caliber rifle like the m82 like that anyway. You could break your wrist firing it from the hip.
posted by Justinian at 2:46 PM on July 10

He has a longer rifling installed and a larger air cooler like in this photo on the bottom

The barrel is the same length; the perforated-metal barrel shroud / handguard is part of the M203 package. (I've never really been clear on why the '203 requires the honking big barrel shroud; presumably it has something to do with maintaining the stiffness of the weapon since the launcher itself doesn't really change the heat dissipation much IMO, and really doesn't even generate that much heat while being fired.)

I don't think you can completely rule out the possibility that the effect was added in post, but it looks like it was done in-camera with the choice of lenses and framing.

Reminds me of the photo with the kid and the giant hog. A very short lens lets you alter the apparent size of two objects even without putting that much physical distance in between them. You can do funny things by having two people stand just slightly closer or further away from the camera, and then cutting off their feet so it's hard to tell what's going on.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:54 PM on July 10

Krautland - I agree that it could be the 16-35 (that's a much more likely lens for a photojournalist) it IS possible that if the 15mm was used on a 1.3 (1D) or 1.6 (40D/50D/Etc) body, the "fishy" effect would look much more like what we're seeing in these images rather than how it would on a full frame camera.
posted by blaneyphoto at 3:27 PM on July 10

thanks for all the answers, M16A2 was what I thought too, but now having read about "fish eye" lenses it all makes sense.


thanks all!
posted by tiamat at 4:50 AM on July 13