ZWO 1600MM-Cool Bit Depth?

[groberts]

I'm slowly working through using PI for the first time and have arrived at the SubFrameSelector process.

I have a late-2016 ZWO1600MM-Cool and just want to check the correct resolution input for this camera, which I believe is 12-bits. Please can someone confirm this or otherwise?

Thanks

[david_taurus83]

Its 12 bit but the driver scales it up to 16 bit so as far as PI is concerned its 16 bit.

[groberts]

Excellent that's very helpful. 

I had of course tried Google but, as is often the case, came across a number of conflicting views.  Don't understand what's happening with the driver scaling or why but happy to go with that. 

Many thanks David 👍  

[david_taurus83]

The dynamic range is still 12 bit, that doesnt change. The driver only scales the ADU value to readout in 16 bit mode. So if you have a star centre fully saturated at 4095 ADU in 12 bit, the driver just scales the value up to 65535 ADU in 16 bit. The brightness stays the same, it doesnt change. Only the readout value! That's my understanding anyway!