> I actually want to know what camera is capturing 80 megapixels at 48 bits per pixel. The IQ180 is 16 bits per pixel...
Presumably that's 16-bits for each channel of Red, Green, Blue. Since every pixel is composed of the three RGB components, that's how you get 48-bits for every pixel (and internally, Photoshop refers to 16-bits per color channel as 'RGB48Mode').
There aren't actually three channels per pixel on most sensors. It's one channel (and only one color) and then there's a mixing process. I'm doubtful that you need 48 bits to do that mixing correctly, but maybe that is the standard way to do it.
Presumably that's 16-bits for each channel of Red, Green, Blue. Since every pixel is composed of the three RGB components, that's how you get 48-bits for every pixel (and internally, Photoshop refers to 16-bits per color channel as 'RGB48Mode').