Why do family film photos from the 70s-80s much different and better than 90s point and shoot photos?

Hi there,

I’ve been playing around with some 90s Canon and Pentax point and shoots just on automatic mode. Looking back on some old family photos from the 70s and 80s, I notice that the pictures produced are far more crisp and true to colour whereas the pictures produced by my (rather poor) photography is quite overexposed, grainy or high contrast with the colours not being very true to life— this seems to be the case with a number of different 90s point and shoots I have used.

I am curious to see why it actually is that the result in picture looks different between these generations of cameras, or maybe it has nothing to do with that. I would really appreciate any knowledge or insight about whether I could ever produce the desired image using a point and shoot on automatic or whether I would have to switch to an older or manual camera.

I have attached some examples of what I mean.

Thank you so much.