This footage is interesting to watch, for its own sake and especially historically. It provides a distinctive and almost nostalgic look at a once-common sight at Coney Island, and there are also a variety of sights included in the four minutes or so of footage. Its main limitation is the camera angle, which offers only a partial view of the scene, and which also makes some potentially interesting details hard to see. These limitations are of course not uncommon to movies of the era.
The footage is set at the hippodrome at Coney Island's Dreamland, and it shows portions of several different events, mostly races. The camera is set at the end of one of the straightaway sections, so that you can see the horses and riders from head on as they come towards the camera. As they turn to go around the curve, they then disappear from sight until they come around for the next lap.
On a couple of occasions, the camera pans slightly, in order to catch a little more of the action, but it doesn't really help. Whether due to the equipment or due to the location, the camera field is only able to shift by about 30 degrees or so, and this is not enough to help noticeably. So each time the horses come past, there is then dead running time as they move through the part of the course that the camera does not pick up.
The footage makes up for this by showing portions of an interesting variety of events, with the highlight being a Roman-style chariot race. The camera is just a bit too far from the track to be able to catch all of the details, but it is interesting enough to make it worthwhile to slow down the replay to try to catch as much as you can.
Although the film footage has these noticeable limitations, it does make the setting look like a fun place to be, and with a little imagination you can mentally fill in some of the things that the movie misses.