high image pixel depth

[Ghost]

I would like to acquire and save a colour image with the highest pixel depth possible using IMAQ for IEEE 1394. The resolution does not need to be high (640x480 at most) and the frame rate can be very low (1-3 Hz). Is it possible to get very high depth in an image when the majority of LabVIEW functions (i.e. write images, avi) use 8-bits/colour? I know that in the IMAQ array to colour image function there is a U64 output that is used if supported. Does this mean that I can get 16-bit depth per colour and if so does anyone know a camera that would support this?

[RManion]

Hi Ghost,

Like you said at the end of your post, the ability to record an image with such pixel depth will depend entirely upon the camera being used. Assuming you have a camera of this bit depth, it is certainly possible to use LabVIEW and IMAQ 1394 to interact with that image. The write file functions you mentioned are bound by the format of the file type you are trying to save. For example, an avi file supports only 8 bit images. If you wanted to save an image to file with greater bit depth, you can use IMAQ Vision to save one of these images as a .png or .tif file.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Regards,

Robert