Philmont Scout Ranch is a working ranch. They have vast pastures on the New Mexico landscape with horses (about 230 head) and cattle. I’m not a cowboy shooter, so to have the opportunity to work with these charismatic characters in such a romantic setting, how can I say no? It’s all set up, not by accident. That is everything but the horses, which they are rounding up to run past our lenses. Them horses have a mind of their own! That’s what Buckie was dealing with when I made this click. I saw the light on the ground from the setting sun. I could see Buckie was riding in that direction, so I zoomed to 600mm and tracked him in the viewfinder until he was where you see him. I made a whole lot of clicks of Buckie last night, but this is my favorite. I simply love the last light on the range.

The sun was setting over the California hills, the warm light being soaked in by all, it’s a romantic time to watch a 1929 Waco GXE making lazy passes. Yeah, tempting to zoom in tight but there is something to be said for those gentle curves of wing and hills.

The new Z24-70f2.8 II is a real sweet lens! I pounded it these past few days with lots of challenges and it made mincemeat of them all. I’ve been asked by phone, email and in person on the flight line, “Is the autofocus as fast as everyone says? I hear it’s twice as fast as vs 1!” I know of no test for determining focusing speed nor a scale to state verbally how fast a lens focuses. Is it faster? I’ve been telling folks its faster than my imagination. That answer doesn’t seem to work for most. I say a tad faster, and they ask what does that mean. Saying it keeps up with my vision doesn’t seem to work either. So I’m trying this in an attempt to answer the question. I can tell you for 100% certainty that being so close to Little Horse, the panning speed to keep up with it is killer! My shooting rate went down as I simply couldn’t turn at the trunk that fast when that close to a screaming Mustang. But I did capture sharp images and that tells me it’s me and not the gear. So hopefully it will make sense when I say the Z24-70f2.8 II is Mustang fast!