Depth of Field Affects Perceived Depth in Stereographs

Abstract

Although it has been reported that depth of field influences depth perception in nonstereo photographs, it remains unclear how depth of field affects depth perception under stereo viewing conditions. We showed participants stereo photographs with different depths of field using a Wheatstone stereoscope and a commercially available 3D TV. The depicted scene contained a floor, a background, and a measuring probe at different locations. Participants drew a floor plan of the depicted scene to scale. We found that perceived depth decreased with decreasing depth of field for shallow depths of field in scenes containing a heightin-the-field cue. For larger depths of field, different effects were found depending on the display system and the viewing distance. There was no effect on perceived depth using the 3D TV, but perceived depth decreased with increasing depth of field using the Wheatstone stereoscope. However, in the 3D TV case, we found that the perceived depth decreased with increasing depth of field in scenes in which the height-in-the-field cue was removed. This indicates that the effect of depth of field on perceived depth may be influenced by other depth cues in the scene, such as height-in-the-field cues.

Chromablur

“…us, se ing DoF to the appropriate value enables accurate perception of scale and depth [Held et al 2010;Vishwanath and Blaser 2010] and increases perceived realism [Mauderer et al 2014;Zhang et al 2015].…”

Change detection in pictorial and solid scenes: The role of depth of field

“…Depth of field, as a pictorial depth cue, is defined as the distance range in which objects are perceived as sharp [ 24 – 26 ]. Manipulating depth of field is a popular photographical technique that is used widely by photographers and cinematographers to direct viewers’ attention to interesting objects or important parts of a scene [ 27 – 30 ].…”

The (In)Effectiveness of Simulated Blur for Depth Perception in Naturalistic Images

“…Similarly, Wang et al [ 15 ] provided evidence that a globally blurred background enhances the perceived depth separation between the background and a sharp, disparity defined foreground object. Nefs [ 8 ] found that depth of field systematically affected perceived depth/width ratio of photographs of natural scenes, while Zhang et al [ 17 ] have shown complex patterns of dependencies between depth of field, height-in-the-field, 3D display system, and perceived depth when observers were asked to draw floor plans of viewed scenes to scale. All these studies find that blur modulates the perception of global scene depth.…”

“…Apart from notable exceptions [ 15 – 17 ], the experiments performed on blur and disparity have generally used impoverished synthetic stimuli, such as lines, gratings and random dot stereograms. These stimuli intentionally avoid monocular cues such as geometric perspective, which are present in everyday viewing of natural scenes.…”