Field of view comparison between Teslacam and typical dashcam

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Except the Tesla is recording 4 different camera angles at once (and could do more if they felt it were worthwhile). Come to think of it, I wonder how the front-facing wide-angle Tesla camera compares to your dashcam…

That looks like a HW3 camera?

It's HW4 on a 2026 Model Y Premium/LR.

Do you mean the bumper camera on the Juniper? That one definitely has a much wider FOV but I don't believe the bumper camera is being recorded.

Well, that's just the Center forward camera. My Tesla Model 3 2026 w/ HW4 has 6 camera views (3 forward Left, Right and Center, 3 rearward, left, right and center.) Also the HW4 front center while not ultra wide has a wider field of view than the one displayed. There's actual overlapping of each of the camera's FOV that gets recorded.

There’s also a wide camera in the mirror camera housing. It’s not recorded for dashcam either though. If you have HW4 the B-pillar cams are recorded and cover a lot of this area though

Check the other front view cams in the service menu.

TheGreen's video extraction from HW3 shows the FOV of the pair of front-facing cameras in the windscreen. One is a fisheye, the other is distance focused, as well the B pillar and side repeaters. The HW4 cams are similarly mounted higher res and framerate. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJItiai3GTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJItiai3GTA)

That is true... I will grab screenshots from the B-pillar cams and overlay it to see if there are any gaps in the coverage. Thanks for the reminder.

Are any 360', or even 180' cameras good for dashcams?

Your car has 7 I believe, assuming no front bumper camera. In your windshield there are two front facing. If you have the bumper camera then 8 total.

Any reason why Tesla decides to use the distance-focused one for the dashcam rather than the fisheye one?

The two side front facing cameras are also recording. You should include those in the overlay to have the full comparison.

Yup, will try that tonight for comparison.

Another quirk I found with the Tesla's dashcam is that when I initiate a dashcam footage save (either by horn, by left dial press & hold, or manually on the screen), it saves the footage at when I initiate plus the preceding 10 minutes, but nothing afterwards. So coming up on an accident (for example), if I press the dashcam button to record too early, it will just record driving up to the scene. It would be nice if it records the preceding 10 minutes but also a couple minutes after pressing the dashcam button.

Should be recording 6 cameras now. Front, rear, pillars and fenders. Would be cool to also have the wide front screen camera instead of just the main camera.

No actual idea, but I suspect housing clipping, distortion, and aspect ratio - it looks "untidy"

Your guess is as good as mine. If I took a stab at it, I would say it's easier to capture license plates and other small details using the front main camera. They should absolutely expose both cameras in the front upper housing to dashcam though!

This for sure would be a nice update, I've been frustrated by this too

It is 6 for HW4 owners, 4 for HW2.5-HW3.

It still has a huge blind spot. Having a wide view dashcam doesn’t hurt.

Yeah for sure. I’m not denying that, I was just curious to see what the overlay would look like. 🙂

If you go into service mode you will see Tesla just provides the cropped version by default. There is a wider angle saved on the internal computer and footage can be requested from Tesla if something happens. [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7AaPEGVEOYU](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7AaPEGVEOYU)

I’ve run into that too and thought it was odd. But after thinking about it makes more sense to me now. I think the reasoning behind this is so that you don’t have to fumble around trying to save the dashcam footage during the heat of the moment, and can just hit it when free and clear of an incident. That’s just my thoughts though.

That makes sense but if it's set to horn press, and you encounter a near miss (like someone cut you off or something like that), and you honk at them, you won't really get the entire interaction/incident, and would only get everything up to when you honk. I now have to remind myself to press/activate the dashcam record well after coming across an incident so that the entire incident is saved. I guess it's a shift in mindset.

Correct but the image looks like a HW4 image. HW3 were not that clear.

Yeah that makes sense too. I haven’t had to use the horn too much and haven’t really checked that. The horn triggered dashcam should record some time after the trigger, but then why not both 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Yes, but I believe only 6 of those are recording, correct? It was built in Dec 2025, I don't think it has the front bumper camera, but I haven't looked. I was really only counting the recorded video camera shots.

Ahh yeah fair enough. In which case, yep, currently 6 (on HW4).

Pillar cams don’t cover much of the front at all

Have you compared the horn trigger result? When I tap the icon, it triggers the save *now*, but if I honk the horn, there is a delay of two or more seconds *before* it saves, thereby capturing the event before the end of the recording. Watch the road and have your passenger watch the dashcam icon and try it.

The main thing to bear in mind is that the dashcam function is a bonus, not the primary function of the cameras. They are there, and were selected for the self-driving function, and the SentryMode and dashcam features were an after-thought/bonus. As such their FOV is meeting the design intent.

I've only tried using the horn as a trigger a few times, and was disappointed that the recording stops a couple seconds after I honked, which led me to pretty much disabled that option (because it would give me a false sense that the whole incident would get recorded when I honked). Now I just use the right thumb knob long press as the triggers and I'm more mindful to let the incident unfold first before pressing it.

But they do overlap the front camera so they’re collectively super-wide angle. That’s more intended for the car to see and not the driver.

Do yall have access to that? My model3 only has the rear facing side cameras when i check the usb key footage. With the blink signal light

Also "fun" fact: The front facing camera bundle has three cameras. The normal one (you see in the dashcam), a zoom and a wide angle. You can see the other cameras as preview via service mode. Would've been better if Tesla uses the wide angle or all three cameras for dashcam foptage

This is exactly why I still use a dashcam. Sometimes you just want to capture something that you saw off to the side, you know?

I believe only newer HW4 cars have the pillar cam recordings.

The dash cam might have a blind spot, but that's only because it's showing the narrow front-facing camera instead of the wide angle front-facing camera. The wide angle cam can see A-pillar to A-pillar, looks more like [this](https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/2024/en-us/GUID-A012B435-7AB0-43F7-A0C1-4668D25F6FBD-online-en-US.jpg). I'm not sure why they don't use the wide angle cam for the sentry footage.

How do we get access to this on the flash drive??

Its only internal and the wide view is not written to usb flash. However you can submit a request and Tesla will provide the footage in case of an accident/etc.

Allow you to choose the split in your clip, so you could do 5 before 5 after, 7 and 3, etc.

Florida??

Toronto/Ontario

I installed an additional front dash cam for the wider angle, ability to capture audio, and as a backup to the Tesla dash cam.

May I ask which dashcam you went with and how you are powering it?

Rove R2-4K dual dash cam though I didn’t install the rear camera. It’s powered by the 12v socket. I didn’t try too hard to hide the wires, used adhesive wire clips.

You can push the button again, up to 10 minutes later.