More of a pastebin post.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=115775
Is an important URL for changing the resolution on a DS18B20 via the Raspberry PI. Pay attention to the note re RPi2 and changing the code.
I also changed the GPIO pin to 4 to save rewiring but disabled the config.txt option for 1wire and disabled the gpio and thrm in /etc/modules just in case while running this program.
It seems to be working, now have the resolution set at 12bits on a new sensor I received that was working in .5c steps.