Many people adore the look of photographs taken with older cameras. The millions of plastic bodied cheap lens bearing cameras that flooded the consumer photography market starting around the mid-20th century had flaws that have come to be a hallmark of their time. The dark vignettes, over saturated colors, and often blown highlights have a certain undeniably flawed appeal to many. Why scrounge the flea markets looking for a camera or waste the money on trendy new (but just as poorly constructed) expensive knockoffs?
Frank Lazaro, a member of the Digital Photography School community, has put together a fantastic tutorial on taking your digital photographs and giving them the vintage feel of older photos. He uses Photoshop and the tutorial and steps are geared towards Photoshop users, but none of the steps are extremely specific to using Photoshop. The effects could easily be recreated with a bit of tweaking to the process in another photo editing program like GIMP. If you're in the mood to tinker with some of your photos but aren't interested in being really hands on with the process check out previously reviewed Wanokoto, a web based image editor that helps you create vintage effects.