Yeah, see -
Here's a shot I took with a Nikon F5 on Ilford FP4+ through a Red filter in 2001.
Now here's a shot I took with an EOS5D and flipped to high-contrast B&W in Lightroom in 2009.
Other than the resolution, they're syntactically identical. It's just easier for me to take B&W these days than it was 10 years ago. Now here's another. This is a ruin in Peru taken by my mother in 1966:
This is a ruin in New mexico taken by me in 2011:
Color cast may be due to altitude; the New Mexico ruin is at 9,000 feet while the Peruvian one is at 14 or so. But other than that, once you crunch the resolutions down to something similar, it's the same photo. So I guess I grew up with photographers, and our photos weren't shitty, so "shitty photos" weren't nostalgic, they were bad.
I think there's a certain element of the natural aging of a photo, like when a photo fades on a shelf. I get a little nostalgic when I see photos that are a bit washed out because my great grandmother had photos of she and her husband that had been on the same shelf for years and had been faded by the sun coming through a window. For some reason I equate some of these filters with the look of those photos.
Enjoyed the photos, thanks. It's funny what becomes "nostalgia" and what becomes repellant. "shitty photos" as you describe them do feel like part of my childhood. I would include polaroids in there too and those old school hanimex cameras (see below) I think of these things along the same lines as shag carpet, cigarette purses (little coozies for your smokes that were all the rage), Stained glass lamps etc. All things I have a fond nostalgia for but then there is the cigarette smoke, the shitty jug wine that I have no nostalgia for but were equally as pervasive back then. Hell, this has been a fun post. I've enjoyed this run down memory lane. Makes me want to play horse shoes, use an encyclopedia to source information and go night swimming. --and take "shitty photos" of it all.
)