Focusing while walking / real estate

Sean Nelson wrote:

Brett8883 wrote:

Sean Nelson wrote:

So here's an interesting question: are there standard parameters that can be assumed for the size and distance at which video is viewed, and do those assumptions lead to the same size for the acceptable circle of confusion?

You can go down the rabbit hole on circle of confusion but in practice I’ve found the standard values work pretty well. The thing is, the larger the viewing size the further your viewing distance will be so it doesn’t shift the formula significantly one way or the other. The only time CoC really comes into play is when you change formats.

I think that's certainly been true in the past, but what about 4K and now 8K displays? What's the point of having an 8K display if you don't sit close enough to it to require its additional resolution? And if you sit that close, then depth of field will be more critical - at least in the technical sense, although artistic vision of course plays a big role.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I don’t see people moving closer to displays to take advantage of higher resolution and even if they do it won’t be to an extent that will change things in a practical way. Unless you are using a tape measure to measure off distances from the camera the error in determining distance will have a bigger impact on DOF than the CoC. Viewing distance is a parameter of a parameter in determining DoF and standard CoC is already a conservative figure representing the outer limit of human acuity. So no I don’t see that as changing the calculations. I think if anything they are already to conservative which is why some people can get away with focusing to infinity in the OPs example even though thats absurd when you look at it from this technical point of view.