advice on phosphorimager purchase

[Cornelius Krasel]

John Brunstein (brunstei at UNIXG.UBC.CA) wrote:
> 	I beg to differ...16 bit D/A conversion DOES NOT in any way 
> affect the image resolution as compared to 8 or 10 bit, as seems to be 
> implied in some of the previous posts. What it does is split the recorded 
> signal intensities into ~16384 'steps' while an 8-bit machine takes the 
> same range of signal intensities and splits it into 256 'steps'.  This 
> has no discernable effect on image quality.

Does 16 bit D/A conversion not produce a picture with 2^16 grayshades
whereas an 8 bit D/A conversion will produce a picture with only 2^8
grayshades? More grayshades result in better image quality (_not_
resolution!): you can see the "steps" between two shades of gray with
2^8 grayshades, but you can't with 2^16 grayshades.

Or am I completely off here?

--Cornelius.

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