Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) Practice Exam

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How many billion colors can a camera capturing a 12-bit file reproduce?

  1. 16.7

  2. 68.7

  3. 256

  4. 4096

The correct answer is: 68.7

A camera capturing a 12-bit file can reproduce a vast range of colors due to the way bit-depth quantifies color information. Each color channel (red, green, and blue) in a 12-bit file can take on 2^12 values, which equals 4096 individual values per channel. Since there are three color channels, the total number of possible colors is calculated by multiplying the number of values for each channel together: 4096 (red) × 4096 (green) × 4096 (blue). This results in a total of 68,719,476,736 colors, or approximately 68.7 billion colors. Thus, the correct answer reflects the output capability of a camera based on its bit-depth, and the calculation demonstrates why such a large number of colors can be produced from a 12-bit file.