In search for which camera to choose for gigapixels: Crop with less gigapixels? or Full Frame with more gigapixels? I made a simple comparison table where pixels per degree are calculated:
| crop factor | angle in degrees | |
| 300mm 1.5x (APC Nikon) | 1.5 | 3.1 |
| 300mm 1.6x (APC Canon) | 1.6 | 2.9 |
| 300mm 1x (FF) | 1 | 4.6 |
Assume, we have 300mm lens and portrait orientation of camera:
| Camera | Megapixels | image width in pixels | crop | angle in degrees | pixels in 1 degree | Number of images required to cover 360 (with 0 overlap) | Equatorial 360 panorama’s width in pixels |
| Nikon D7200 | 24 | 4000 | 1.5 | 3.1 | 1290 | 116 | 464516 |
| Canon 750d | 24 | 4000 | 1.6 | 2.9 | 1379 | 124 | 496552 |
| Canon 7d mkII | 24 | 3648 | 1.6 | 2.9 | 1258 | 124 | 452855 |
| Canon 5d mkIII | 22 | 3840 | 1 | 4.6 | 835 | 78 | 300522 |
| Nikon d810 | 36 | 4912 | 1 | 4.6 | 1068 | 78 | 384417 |
| Canon 5ds r | 50 | 5792 | 1 | 4.6 | 1259 | 78 | 453287 |
These number doesn’t take into account diffraction which can be a practical issue.
Sony APS-C cameras with 24Mpix should be treated similar to Nikon D7200.
More pixels in degree – better. FF is better than APC-S (requires less images). So for me the winner is Canon 5ds r – it allows to achieve almost the same pixel density as other cameras but you can get the same gigapixel with less images – which will mean less overlaps, less space on a card and computer required, faster shooting/stitching..