50 & 24mm Bokeh - Ugly?

Hello

Just purchased an old 50mm 1.7 and a 24mm 2.8. Really enjoying them and using them far too much at the wide apertures at the mo, but I have been finding the bokeh (hope I have the terminology right) sometimes a little ugly, but this has only come out on the 50mm so far.






No editing on these, both @1.7 on 50mm. It seems to give a bit of a hazy/water droplets which I find really distracting. Is this due to focusing on a mid point, or due to the background texture?

If i focus close on the 24mm its pretty nice




Super sharp in my eyes at 2.8, seems to get softer the smaller you go.

Is there certain rules to getting smooth Bokeh. I have seen some pictures taking advantage of the 50mm droplet type bokeh which were interesting, but for the majority of my snaps I find it ugly!

Saying that, I like the flare in the one below on the 50mm



Cheers
Greg

What make and model are the lenses?

As Gartmore suggested - the quality of bokeh is entirely a factor of the lens. That's why certain lenses, even if they are manual focus, go for so much money.

Also, I just sold a 24mm which got softer when I stopped it down. Turned out I was a moron and I had a finger print on the back glass - which meant that the higher the F-stop, the more in focus my finger print was. Gave her a very careful clean and she behaved beautifully afterwards.

Its your old 24mm 2.8 corsina, find it soft above f8, but impressed with it at 2.8.

Smc-A 50mm 1.7 is the other

Like Whelmed said it's a lens thing.
This explains most of it in an understandable way http://toothwalker.org/optics/bokeh.html

I was thinking you could maybe get smoother bokeh if you make the if you apply an soften/blur filter to the lens but only at the edge but not the centre, I still need to try it out if it works or not.

Well the 24mm has nice soft bokeh and that's I think very nice.

The 50mm gives a far busier bokeh and you need to be more careful with that.
I don't mind it with most photos but with the last one the flower you got something that looks like a necklace in the centre of the frame near the flower and I don't like that

Cheers for the info Stefan, good reading.

Hadnt really look to closely at the last picture, but see what you mean now. I was just looking at the interesting flare.

The 24mm is really nice, certainly a keeper I think. Focus closer at the range than my kit lens which is useful.

Took some test shot yesterday in overcast conditions with the 18-55 DAL & the 50mm SMC-A. At all apertures that the 18-55 could reach I prefered the colour and blur (and to my eyes the kit seemed sharper too). One good thing is it seems to have given me more belief on how good the kit lens can be

Do need to play around with the 50mm @ f2-f3.5 and see what it is like.

Cheers