In general terms, “horsepower” is a measurement of how much power an engine can produce. In America, one horsepower is 745.7 watts, or “1 hp.” There’s also “metric horsepower,” which is about 735 watts or so.
This is important.
Because last Saturday, I went to the harness track with my camera gear, hoping to capture some nice racing shots. My Nikon Df was the primary shooter, and for the evening I used the Meyer Optik Görlitz Orestegor 500mm f/5.6 lens (“Johnny Wadd”) on the chassis. Since the race card would last until the evening, I wanted to see how well the photos would turn out under the track’s lighting system.
Mind you, the track itself is a half-mile oval, so I’m at one end of the oval – and I’m shooting action at the far turn, a quarter of a mile away.
Got a few shots that I liked, mostly these …
Not bad. I mean, it’s okay for what I need as a “proof of concept” or “test photos,” so I’ll take that every day.
Then this photo showed up in my camera feed. And I need to explain.
After every race, a truck drags a mesh curtain over the track to remove hoof prints and sulkey wheel marks. And while the truck did its job, another horse and rider were on the track, warming up for a race later on the card.
Hey, when the shots come, they come.
Because what we have here is a horse (with essentially 1 hp) alongside a truck (with charitably more than 1 hp under the hood).
This works for me.
Chuck The Writer 
Funny thing about horsepower: an actual horse, when measured by the ‘Watt method’, produces rather more than 1 horsepower. About 7, as I recall. (These race horses would probably be less as the ‘standard’ was against a draft horse – not one of the big ones though.)
Or as Carroll Shelby said: “Horsepower sells cars; torque wins races”.
I wonder how much torque a real horse produces?
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