A black-and-white digital camera lays a fine grid over an image and then measures and records a binary number representing the level of gray it sees in each cell of the grid. For example, if four-bit numbers are used, the value of black is set to 0000 and the value of white to 1111, and any level of gray is somewhere between 0000 and 1111. If six-bit numbers are used, black is 000000, white is 111111, and all grays are between the two.

Suppose we wanted to distinguish among 254 different levels of gray within each cell of the grid. How many bits would we need to use to represent these levels?