hyalinejim

The answer, from looking at the manual, is no. There is an EX Tel Conv. mode but it doesn't work for video on the GH6. So there's no sweet 2x mode for HD shooters.
It looks to me that the only thing that comes close for 1080p is to set a custom mode to shoot 4K pixel/pixel and then scale it 50% in post to give a clean 1.5x zoom on a HD timeline. Or you could scale it to 75% which should give you a clean 2x digital zoom.
But of course, then you end up dealing with 4K files anyway which defeats the purpose of shooting HD. And also there's a bit of post work involved. And if you're aiming for the 2x then framing will be wider than what you want.
The beauty of the GH5's 2x Digital Zoom for HD was you just pressed a function button and the reach of your lens doubled.

Yep, that GH6 grain is very film-like.
R5C 10bit looks like there is heavy temporal NR going on which causes that unnatural shimmering, especially when you compare it to the RAW output which is noisy but doesn't shimmer.

The answer, from looking at the manual, is no. There is an EX Tel Conv. mode but it doesn't work for video on the GH6. So there's no sweet 2x mode for HD shooters.
It looks to me that the only thing that comes close for 1080p is to set a custom mode to shoot 4K pixel/pixel and then scale it 50% in post to give a clean 1.5x zoom on a HD timeline. Or you could scale it to 75% which should give you a clean 2x digital zoom.
But of course, then you end up dealing with 4K files anyway which defeats the purpose of shooting HD. And also there's a bit of post work involved. And if you're aiming for the 2x then framing will be wider than what you want.
The beauty of the GH5's 2x Digital Zoom for HD was you just pressed a function button and the reach of your lens doubled.

What do you guys think about the Freewell Vari ND magnetic kit for GH6 with DR Boost on?
It splits a Vari ND into its components which means you can do this:
- Mount the base ring which is one stop reduction, effectively base ISO is now 1000
- Add 2-5 Vari ND for shooting indoors
- Swap it for 6-9 when shooting outdoors (9 stops, if it's actual, is enough for me even in bright light as I'm not usually looling for very narrow DOF)
Looks like the colour cast is minimal but I haven't found much info on X pattern just yet.
They also do solid NDs which stack and I could get a 3 and 6 or some other combo. But I think I would give up a little image quality for the convenience of fine tuning exposure with a variable system. 

The answer, from looking at the manual, is no. There is an EX Tel Conv. mode but it doesn't work for video on the GH6. So there's no sweet 2x mode for HD shooters.
It looks to me that the only thing that comes close for 1080p is to set a custom mode to shoot 4K pixel/pixel and then scale it 50% in post to give a clean 1.5x zoom on a HD timeline. Or you could scale it to 75% which should give you a clean 2x digital zoom.
But of course, then you end up dealing with 4K files anyway which defeats the purpose of shooting HD. And also there's a bit of post work involved. And if you're aiming for the 2x then framing will be wider than what you want.
The beauty of the GH5's 2x Digital Zoom for HD was you just pressed a function button and the reach of your lens doubled.

The answer, from looking at the manual, is no. There is an EX Tel Conv. mode but it doesn't work for video on the GH6. So there's no sweet 2x mode for HD shooters.
It looks to me that the only thing that comes close for 1080p is to set a custom mode to shoot 4K pixel/pixel and then scale it 50% in post to give a clean 1.5x zoom on a HD timeline. Or you could scale it to 75% which should give you a clean 2x digital zoom.
But of course, then you end up dealing with 4K files anyway which defeats the purpose of shooting HD. And also there's a bit of post work involved. And if you're aiming for the 2x then framing will be wider than what you want.
The beauty of the GH5's 2x Digital Zoom for HD was you just pressed a function button and the reach of your lens doubled.

Yep, that GH6 grain is very film-like.
R5C 10bit looks like there is heavy temporal NR going on which causes that unnatural shimmering, especially when you compare it to the RAW output which is noisy but doesn't shimmer.

Yep, that GH6 grain is very film-like.
R5C 10bit looks like there is heavy temporal NR going on which causes that unnatural shimmering, especially when you compare it to the RAW output which is noisy but doesn't shimmer.

Thanks for doing this!
Good to hear that normal 1080 looks good. Can you control the amount of zoom in the pixel/pixel mode? On the GH5 there were two ways of doing it. One was pixel for pixel, more than 2x zoom, and was mushy. The other was exactly 2x zoom, a slightly wider crop, downsampled and with no artifacts.
 

I did follow up on shooting some quick test shots at 1080p, but then got very busy and couldn't get back to this thread.
Then, funnily enough, I had to shoot a project in 1080p (client request).

I'll post up some stills when I get a mo.
My initial thought were that the image looks sharp and detailed.

The 1080p pixel / pixel mode looked a bit mushy though.  I wouldn't use it personally.

That's some lovely work!

Just a note IMO about linear Raw vs Log encoding. Let's keep in mind that log encoding was developed by Kodak for Cineon scanning of film negative, and is basically what was passed on to digital cameras. It's not an inferior image encoding method developed for hybrid 4k mirrorless cameras. The LogC encoding on the Alexa is probably the most prominent log curve for a digital camera to be very close to Cineon, and Red and Sony eventually capitulated to that.
It's not inferior to linear raw, unless the individual log curve implementation by that camera manufacturer is left wanting. It's a more efficient encoding of highlights and shadows because it gives less code values to highlights, rather than half of a linear image for the brightest stop. It also allocates more code values to the shadows than linear raw. I would rather take 12 bit log ProRes RAW from the Sony cams/Ninja V than 12 bit linear DNGs, but obviously that's a much more expensive solution than the fp - like 5x the price.
The reason that log footage is often inferior in the prosumer cams is because it's probably chroma subsampled, denoised and DCT compressed. ProRes 4444 log from the Alexa Classic is a thing of wonder though.
If you apply the inverse transform of the log encoding curve, then your image is back in linear space and if you factor out the ways the image has been decimated, then it is very close to an original raw recording.
 

You're right, they are defined and that's what allows us to transform in and out of them to other colour spaces. It's not like we have to work in linear floating point in ACES gamut, Rec2020 or Alexa wide gamut, but to me working in ACES is a kind of lingua franca where the mathematics behave in a simple predictable way that is the same as the way exposure works in the real world. And under the hood, the Resolve colour corrections are still applied in a log space (ACEScc or ACEScct). I'm not saying it's perfect, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
The caveat though is that more often than not, an image that is represented as sRGB or Rec709 has had a linear dynamic range compressed into the 0-1 range not just by doing a transform from linear to sRGB or linear to Rec709, because that would cut out a lot of highlights. So there's some form of highlight rolloff - but what did they do? In addition, they probably apply an s-curve - what did they do? Arri publishes their logC to Rec709 transform which is via their K1S1 look, so this is knowable. But if you transform logC to Rec709 with the CST it will do a pure mathematical transform based on the log curve to the Rec709 curve and it will look different. 
So basically, to say an image is sRGB or Rec709 isn't accounting for the secret sauce that the manufacturer is adding to their jpeg output to most pleasingly, in their mind, shove the linear gamma/native wide gamut sensor data into the "most pleasing" sRGB or Rec709 container. Sorry if you knew all that, I'm not trying to be didactic.
Just as a side note, Sigma apparently didn't do this with the OFF profile, which is both helpful and not helpful (see below).
 
I stated before, that the work Adobe did with CinemaDNG and the way a tool like Resolve and a few more specialized command line tools like oiiotool and rawtoaces interpret the DNG metadata, is based around capturing and then  interpreting a linear raw image as a linear-to-light scene referred floating point image that preserves the entirety of the dynamic range and the sensor wide gamut in a demosaiced rgb image. Not that Cinema DNG is perfect, but its aim is noble enough.
What you're describing with shooting a chart and devising a profile is what the DNG metadata tags are meant to contain courtesy of the manufacturer (not Adobe), which is why it's a pragmatic option for an ACES input transform in absence of the more expensive and technically involved idea of creating an IDT based on measured spectral sensitive data. If you look in the DNG spec under Camera Profiles it lays out the tags that are measured and supplied by the manufacturer.
Separate from that is the additional sauce employed in the name of aesthetics in Lightroom, and above I described the process by which the manufacturers add a look to their internal jpegs or baked Rec709 movies. And what does it matter if there's something extra that makes the photos look good? Well I'd rather have a clean imaging pipeline where I can put in knowable transforms so that I can come up with my own workflow, when Sigma have kind of fucked up on that count.
What I will say about sigma's OFF profile that was introduced after feedback, is that as best I can tell, they just put a Rec709 curve/gamut on their DNG image almost as malicious compliance, but they didn't tell us exactly what they did. I mean in this case, they did not do any highlight rolloff, which in some ways is good because it's more transparent how to match it to the DNG images, but also unlike a log curve the highlights are lost.
So the most I've been able to deduce is that by inverting a Rec709 curve into ACES that I get a reasonable match to the linear DNG viewed through ACES, but with clipped highlights. But for viewing and exposing the mid range, it's usable to get a reasonable match - ideally with another monitoring LUT applied on top of it for the final transform closer to what you would see in Resolve.
And I absolutely don't want to say that we all must be using these mid-range cameras like we're working on a big budget cg movie, thus sucking the joy out of it.  But like it or not, a lot of the concepts in previously eye-wateringly expensive and esoteric film colour pipelines have filtered down to affordable cameras, mainly through things like log encoding and wide gamut, as well as software like Resolve. But the requisite knowledge has not been passed down as well, as to how to use these tools in the way they were designed. So it has created a huge online cottage industry out of false assumptions. Referring back to the OG authors and current maintainers pushing the high end space forward can go a long way to personal empowerment as to what you can get out of an affordable camera.

I haven't been following this topic very closely and don't have an FP so disregard this if it's not relevant or has been covered already. I can tell you from much experience of looking at colour charts that the colours in "OFF" are far more accurate and true to life than in "ON". The blue patch is a giveaway here as it often is when a colour gamut or matrix is being interpreted incorrectly: in the "ON" version that patch is too purple.

One valid reason not to ETTR on every shot is that it creates extra work in balancing exposure in post, versus exposing for middle grey where the same correction should work for each clip regardless of highlight level.

One valid reason not to ETTR on every shot is that it creates extra work in balancing exposure in post, versus exposing for middle grey where the same correction should work for each clip regardless of highlight level.

Just purchased this camera, coming tomorrow. I am really interested to see how it can match to the ARRI alexa.

+1
For fast turnaround work it's a godsend to stick a normal zoom on there and do the 2x for extra reach without having to change lens.

Great post - thanks!
As a GH5 user I can see lots of interesting little improvements here that are against things that irk me about the GH5 so will be real-life improvements.
A few thoughts:
V-Log clipping at 88 isn't a big deal - for 10-bit footage the difference between 88 and 100 is inconsequential and it's designed to provide compatibility with V-Log cameras with larger DR on the GH5 the HLG mode contains the whole DR of the camera (unlike any of the other picture profiles) so if HLG is in the camera then that's a full-DR alternative to V-Log 13 modes rather than 5 is huge, and especially that there's 4 on the physical dial - I will definitely be using more than 5 of these modes Sleep function forgetting things was definitely a PITA so refinements to that is huge, and the extra custom modes help with that too I'll be particularly interested to see how the 1080p (or 2K?) Prores mode is integrated into the camera.  In addition to image quality, it'll be interesting to see if it requires the newer batteries or not, etc.  
Can you give a bit more information about how well the current (h26x) 1080p ALL-I mode works?
Particularly, I'm interested in how the footage looks from these modes:
1080p24 mode 1080p24 mode with 2X digital zoom 1080p60 mode 1080p60 mode with 2X digital zoom On the GH5 all those modes are downsampled and the footage looks flawless.  Is the GH6 the same?

I think the trick with any kind of camera really is learning its capabilities and then settling into a workflow that is the ideal blend of convenience and perfectionism for your own personal tastes.

I'd be a bit suspicious of anybody who didn't at least try to maximise the performance of their equipment, but I'd be equally dubious of anyone who claimed to make zero compromises in how they end up operating in the field.  It's all a balance.

The main quandary with the GH6 is in managing the jump between Base ISO 250 (V-Log, DR+ Off) and ISO 2000 (DR+ On).  The Dr Boost function is very good and finally lifts the GH series into the heady realm of 'just about acceptable DR' 😅.

Actually, so far in practical use it has been fairly easy to utilise DR+.  I've invested in some high quality fixed ND (Breakthrough X4 - cannot recommend them highly enough) and just whack on the 6-stop and then calibrate a bit using ISO.  Has been working well so far.  Obviously this strategy will not cover all eventualities.

I'm a bit torn as to whether to just stay in DR+ mode regardless of the actual dynamic range of the scene (thus negating the need to constantly jump between very different ISO values).  It's going to be a close call actually.

I'm also in the 'no love for HD' camp, but I will do some tests when I get a mo.

An interesting suite of tests, but the way they count stops of dynamic range is a bit odd. Their stop number "1" (which is clipping) should be "0".
If you're running a race and you're still at the starting line then you've ran exactly zero meters. You can choose to call the starting line "1 meter" but you haven't ran one meter until you've ran one meter (ie: their stop number "2").
Or, to put it another way, we should count the gaps between the lines on the waveform, not the number of lines themselves because the first of those lines represents zero dynamic range.

An interesting suite of tests, but the way they count stops of dynamic range is a bit odd. Their stop number "1" (which is clipping) should be "0".
If you're running a race and you're still at the starting line then you've ran exactly zero meters. You can choose to call the starting line "1 meter" but you haven't ran one meter until you've ran one meter (ie: their stop number "2").
Or, to put it another way, we should count the gaps between the lines on the waveform, not the number of lines themselves because the first of those lines represents zero dynamic range.

An interesting suite of tests, but the way they count stops of dynamic range is a bit odd. Their stop number "1" (which is clipping) should be "0".
If you're running a race and you're still at the starting line then you've ran exactly zero meters. You can choose to call the starting line "1 meter" but you haven't ran one meter until you've ran one meter (ie: their stop number "2").
Or, to put it another way, we should count the gaps between the lines on the waveform, not the number of lines themselves because the first of those lines represents zero dynamic range.

I think it's 800 but I don't know if the difference in highlight detail and/or shadow noise will be quite as noticeable in a Rec709 profile compared to log.