A retired tech in Fort Worth told me to stop buying brand name capacitors, and I hate that he was right

Jason Stone · 2026-10-11T19:35:04.765946+00:00

I used to think off brand caps were a gamble not worth taking on customer cameras, so I stuck with the pricey ones from the big suppliers. A retired tech named Ray in Fort Worth told me over coffee that the cheap box of 100 he got from a surplus lot in 2019 was still holding up in his own gear, and I figured he was just lucky. I bought one $12 box of generics back in March for a batch of point and shoots I flip, and out of the 14 cameras I recapped since, zero have come back with issues. Testing on my meter showed the capacitance was within 5 percent on every single one, which honestly bugged me because I had been paying almost 4 times as much. Your mileage may vary depending on the supplier, so take this with a grain of salt, but it made me rethink how much of the premium is real and how much is just fear. Has anyone else had a cheap parts gamble like this go right, or did I just get a good batch?

Vivisector

Loading…

A retired tech in Fort Worth told me to stop buying brand name capacitors, and I hate that he was right | Camera Repairers - Vivisector