Self-portrait (2007) with 1948 Linhof Super Technika


My favorite camera in my collection — a Pony Premo from 1893. Built with varnished mahogany, red leather bellows, a brass shutter and nickel-plated fittings, it has a revolving back for shooting 4x5" film in either orientation. It still works beautifully. In the Sears Roebuck catalog of that year it sold for $24.50.


The legendary Rollei 35S, with the equally legendary Sonnar collapsible lens. It doesn't get any sharper than that. Less than 4 inches wide, it shoots a full 35mm frame.


A Minolta 16. This camera is about the size of a cigarette lighter and shoots single frames of 16mm wide film. Back in college I used it for candid photography for the yearbook. I bought a 100-ft. roll of Tri-X movie film and reloaded the special cassettes. I calculated that I would get about 4,000 shots from a roll.

I got into photography entirely of necessity. I had no choice. My college major was art, but I discovered as a sophomore that I just couldn't draw.
But fortunately for both my career and self esteem, I discovered that (a) the college yearbook needed a staff photographer, and (b) William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of photography as we know it today, suffered the same unfortunate and obvious lack of drawing skills. To make up for it, he invented what he called “photogenic drawing,” a method of capturing a negative image of an object on sensitized paper.
So I taught myself basic darkroom techniques in record time and mastered the idiosyncrasies of an ancient 4x5 Speed Graphic I found in a closet. And loved every minute of it.
In the intervening years I've explored most genres of the photographic world — journalism, editorial, advertising, and various fine art processes, including gum bichromate prints and photo silk screen printmaking.
These days I concentrate on an annual group photography exhibit in Denver, building the wooden pinhole cameras you've seen on this website, and shooting video and stills for the Department of Homeland Security. I also write a regular column for Camera Arts magazine.
In addition to the annual show, I've exhibited my photographs at various venues, including Loretto Heights College and the prestigious Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver, and the Chelsea National Bank in New York City.
And when there's any time left over, I restore antique sports cars and write books.
Oh... I'm supposed to include personal information. Okay, I was born in Dearborn, Michigan; grew up in Germany; went to high school in Switzerland; attended college in Illinois; moved to Colorado in 1973 but lived again in Europe for two periods since then.
— Bryan Dahlberg  
info@photonbox.com

My very first camera, a 1958 Brownie Starflash. Remembering the design trends of those years, I assume that the color must have been called something like Caribbean Sun-Glow Coral Mistfire.
And below is my first picture with this camera. The small dark object on the pillow is my 7-year-old brother's head, in a hotel room in Lucerne, Switzerland.





This is my 1956 Voigtlãnder Perkeo II. Despite the fact that it shoots a medium-format 6x6 cm negative, it folds up small enough to fit into my jacket pocket with all its vintage accessories — a removable rangefinder, a close-up lens, a light meter the size of a penny, and an original Kodak polarizing filter with instructions. The Color-Skopar lens is one of the sharpest front-focusing lenses ever fitted to a folding camera.


Another 1950s classic — an Exakta IIa from East Germany — shown here with a Novoflex bellows (but minus lens) for slide duplication. These cameras were built like tanks, and besides their durability, they were known for being "left-handed." The shutter release and film advance lever were on the left side of the body. Another oddity was that their old mechanical shutters would time an exposure down to 16 seconds.