Man Takes a Drill to his Camera Sensor in Gut-Wrenching Video

First photographers on TikTok were scratching their lenses, now the ante has been upped significantly with a video showing a camera sensor destroyed by a drill.

Photographer Andres Davila posted horrifying videos to his TikTok page of him first taking a hard brush to his sensor and lens, then using a drill on the inside of the camera and the sensor itself.

@video.andres Replying to @mausumausu_ #donttrythisathome #Photography #tipsandtricks #diy #asmr#hack #canon #camera #triggerwarning ♬ original sound – &lt3

@video.andres

♬ Mr. Clean – Yung Gravy

The cringe-inducing video has racked up an incredible seven million views and Davila tells PetaPixel how his “triggering” videos started off.

“It started off with a coffee mug. If you type in ‘photographer gifts’ on Amazon, those realistic-looking lens coffee mugs come up…so I have received a collection of them from over the years. I made a couple of ‘cleaning hack’ TikToks that consisted of using honey and gravel on the ‘lens,’” he explains.

“This absolutely triggered people. Eventually, I made my way to scratching an old lens filter on my main shooter (Sony a7 iii). Some of the top comments were telling me to ‘take a photo with it.’”

“I would shoot with a wide open aperture and the scratches would disappear. As if they weren’t there and that also got a lot of attention.”

Davila says that he hasn’t actually destroyed anything “really expensive.” He recently bought a Canon Rebel that his son smashed into the ground.

“It was only valued at around $100. That’s probably been the most expensive thing other than the screen protectors and UV filter,” he says.

A Strange TikTok Trend

Davila is not the only person to destroy his camera gear on TikTok. In June, PetaPixel reported on photographer Illumitati mortally wounding her Canon 50mm f/1.8 by taking a rock to the glass, but then using it to create “kind of cool” results.

@illumitatiana #stitch with @video.andres #greenscreen #photography ♬ original sound – Illumitati ?

“I really did scratch it, and the photos were actually not bad at all. The lens is really not great in the first place so I don’t think I’d use it,” she told PetaPixel.

Image credits: Header photo by Andres Davila.