12-bit

Use of 12-bit color depth is found primarily on high-end digital cinema cameras, such as those made by RED and Sony. Twelve bits equal 1.5 bytes, but the color palette expands dramatically from 8-bit (16.7 million) and 10-bit (1.07 billion) color choices to a possible 68.7 billion color choices. As analog content is converted to digital, 12-bit allows a maximum representation of 4096 different colors in a single color map. With RGB signals, where a 10-bit color map of up to 4096 different colors can be chosen for each of the three–red, green, and blue, respectively—there are 68.7 billion color choices.