I have an opposite experience. Most old photos are made with cheap compact auto focus cameras and always somehow blurry and pale, at that time that was the camera "you have in your pocket". Photos with modern smartphone are always superior.

They LOOK worse but they have a sort of nostalgic, "real" feel about them without all the extra post processing. Maybe it's because my eyesight isn't the best but my friend recently took a little digital camera to a festival and the pictures off of that are the ones we all posted.