From a com­ment refer­ring to the Gestapo harass­ing photographers:

That’s right; I don’t want to be too tech­ni­cal, but the focal length of the lens is directly cor­re­lated with hatred of Amer­ica. It goes some­thing like this:

You have a a cell phone cam­era, point and shoot, or 20mm wide angle lens: you are a red blooded Amer­i­can who wants to cel­e­brate our national her­itage by tak­ing pic­tures of pop­u­lar tourist locations.

A 50mm lens: you are also, by and large, a good Amer­i­can, but you have a dis­turb­ing inter­est in “under­stand­ing” the ter­ror­ists and why they attack us.

An 85mm lens: you loath your own coun­try and secretly admire the 9/11 hijack­ers for giv­ing us our come-up-ins. You are not a ter­ror­ist, but your cam­era should prob­a­bly be con­fis­cated and your pic­tures deleted, lest they find their way to al Jazeera mes­sage boards. Your mid­dle name may be Hussein.

A 200mm lens: you are an al Qaeda hench­man actively scout­ing for secu­rity vulnerabilities.

A 300mm lens: you ARE bin Laden!

And yes, every tri­pod is suit­able for launch­ing RPGs, but you need a ball head to attach heat seek­ing missiles.

Another Matt