Good point! But in the other direction, don't forget that even those there's less "pixels" than expected from the sensor, there will be more than 10 bits per ch

Good point! But in the other direction, don't forget that even those there's less "pixels" than expected from the sensor, there will be more than 10 bits per channel, typically 12 or 14. I shouldn't have said it's larger, not necessarily - but it's definitely not 1:1!