No ETC, only digital zoom. As others have mentioned here ETC goes up to 2x whereas digital zoom is 4x. Personally I think that cropping the RAW photo produced better quality than the 4x digital zoom. ETC *might* produce a bit better quality but requires 2 steps (change file size, activate ETC) instead of 1 step of digital zoom (activate 2x or 4x)
ETC can be operated with a single step as follows (on the G6, GM1 & probably several other panasonic cameras)
Initial (one off) setup: Turn ETC on & assign image size to a Fn button.
To use ETC all you need to do is press the Fn button & as the image size changes the ETC will automatically zoom - so L (large) is no ETC, M (medium) is x1.4 ETC & S (small) is x2 ETC.
Works a treat !
On the G6 you can also assign the ETC to the zoom lever & then in custom settings set the Zoom function to zoom (default is auto which will be Exposure unless you attach a lens with electronic zoom). The problem with this approach is you need to leave the image size on the smallest setting - so all your pics will be smaller, but the upside is the zoom lever makes it feel like your prime lenses are zooms (as the zoom is linear - unlike the above approach described which increases the zoom in 2 steps.
There seems to be a fair amount of debate as to whether digital zoom is better than ETC.
I expect RAW will always be better than either digital or ETC, but obviously requires the most effort.
The problem I have with using digital zoom is I won't be able to stop myself pixel peeping & obviously I'm going to be disappointed !
For me ETC is a good compromise - it means I can get that further reach, whilst still being able to frame to taste & still get good results. Also you still get full AF & exposure functions in ETC - so you should stand a better chance of getting the right focus & exposure using ETC over cropping a full size image in PP. I don't know if AF & exposure work in digital zoom.
Some have commented how the jpeg artifacts are more apparent when using ETC - so maybe it's better to turn NR down & use highest quality jpg setting - that should combat it, but you'll probably also get more noise in your images.
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