Shooting Rory McIlroy on 4x5 Film at a PGA Event Is as Chaotic as It Sounds

A 4x5 large format camera is fully manual, everything from focus to exposure to winding the shutter, which makes it a strange choice for photographing a professional golfer signing autographs for a crowd of screaming kids. That's exactly what Jared Polin did at The Truist, a PGA event, capturing one of golf's biggest names just before McIlroy went back-to-back winning the Masters.

Coming to you from Jared Polin, this raw and unfiltered video drops you into 11 uncut minutes of Polin working a 4x5 large format camera in a chaotic crowd. The camera requires him to wind the shutter multiple times to reach the right shutter speed, manually pull and replace dark slides between shots, and re-focus every time McIlroy moves even a few inches down the autograph line. That last part is the core problem: a subject in constant motion, combined with a lens that punishes any focus error at wide apertures.

The lens Polin is using is the Aero Ektar, an old f/2.5 optic that he describes as roughly equivalent to f/1 in 35mm terms. Shooting it wide open, or close to it at around f/3.2 to f/4, gives him the subject isolation that makes the 4x5 format worth the trouble. He explains why he didn't just stop down to f/8: doing so would defeat the entire purpose of using that lens. The tradeoff is a razor-thin depth of field on a moving subject, in a crowd, with police officers, volunteers, and spectators all shifting around him at once. Out of six frames, most have focus issues. One shot stands out.

That final frame is the one worth seeing. Polin says he didn't even notice the little girl in the frame when he set the shot up. He was rushing because a police officer was moving into the frame and other people were converging on the scene. The result is a genuine moment, McIlroy signing autographs surrounded by kids, with the image built around a child he caught almost by accident. He also walks through the technical side of what went wrong on the other five frames, including how the shutter speed progression works on a camera like this (each click of the shutter advances to a faster speed, which is why he's winding it repeatedly between shots rather than setting it once). Polin also shot a broader gallery from The Truist on 4x5, including posed portraits of other players, made possible in part by ESPN's Michael Collins asking players to stop and pose. That full gallery is worth seeing alongside this video.

Check out the video above for the full breakdown from Polin, including the keeper images and his honest assessment of whether the 4x5 was the right tool for the job.