What follows is why so many on the Hog Forum regard me as a jerk. It does not bother me one bit. When one is truly a master of your discipline then one learns to deal with the envious regards from the lesser practitioners in ones field.

The effect is generally in the realms of that category of what you are calling bokeh, but it is merely an effect and not the 'reason' for what you are seeing. There is nothing malfunctioning with your lens that this image is displaying.

Now the boring didactic part of this story/explanation. Everyone has heard of the golden means, also the Fibonacci principle. That Fibonacci principle is attributed to an Italian story about I guy who championed the principle of what is also referred to as the golden means. Essentially the golden means is a FOUNDATION of the active principle that governs the way our world works. The growth, the PATTERN of that growth in the natural world follows this interesting pattern. The way leaves grow on a stem and branch from weeds to giant elm trees, that pattern is followed. It is encoded in the life structure from a single leaf and the spiral of a snails shell. So there is an inherent pattern created by the plants leaves and the pattern you are seeing in this display, be it called bokeh or golden means it is the outcome of the inherent pattern that leaves exhibit as they break up the beams of light flowing through the tree's leaf pattern.

An additional didactic reference for this can be found by looking up a rather unique photographic lens made by Schneider called the Imagon. To achieve the 'soft focus' effects of the Imagon a device is installed in the front of the lens called an 'airy diffusion disk'. This is the part of the Imagon lens that creates effects like those you see in your image sun light through the tree's levees. In some images where a direct light source is shown in the photograph, the airy diffusion disk may show as a cluster of tiny points of light as seen as circles if the lens disk is dialed fully open or as partial crescents if closed down.

I found several images associated with the Imagon lens. The first shows the effect in the Christmas tree lights, especially to the right of the image. The second image shows the extreme effect most call bokeh and are the repeating pattern of diffraction with interference of light waves generated by the shaping pattern by a simple lens. The third images shows the Imagon airy diffusion disk and the light pattern it generates when in use. The last image is of an Imagon lens with it's airy diffusion discs.

To end this, the pattern you are seeing is the natural patterning of sunlight as it passes through leaves that interfere with that light and are creating a 'pattern' that is inherently made up of a pattern that you are seeing based on the golden means. Your natural and biological response to this pattern is built into the biological structure of your own body. Congratulation! You are a living being who for a moment has connected to the natural structure of the world in which you are part! I know, way to Pagan for the Hog! LOL!!!

All the images shown are from the internet, they are not my photographs.

There are multiple errors here that I cannot leave uncorrected.

There is no Fibonacci principle. There is the Fibonacci sequence (which is probably what is being referred to here) that generates the Fibonacci numbers.

There is no golden means. There is something called the golden mean. "Means" is analogous to method, as in "nefarious means were used." Mean when used with "golden" is a mathematical term.

Fibonacci did not discover or invent the golden mean. It dates back at least to Aristotle, more than a thousand years before Fibonacci.

There is an interesting connection between the Fibonacci numbers and the golden mean, which may have been what gave rise to the other misunderstandings: adjacent numbers in the Fibonacci sequence come close to being in the golden ratio although never exactly.

I am not basing my hypothesis on any technical theory that can only be determined in optical bench or laboratory methodologies and controlled environments. Whether it is a form of diffraction, a forced aberration caused by interference or other unknown effect caused by any number of optical phenomena or something unique to the environment in the OP particular shot, is anyone's guess or at least an educated guess.

In my own experience, however, I have seen this kind of effect and many others for which I have no theoretical explanation but nonetheless, are not distracting or detriment to any given image. Some are actually interesting, aesthetically pleasing and I have learned to call upon them and apply them as needed.

When bokeh or selective focus is discussed, oftentimes foreground elements are not part of the conversations nor are the effects or affectations of their presence in the scene.

The OPs question suggests to me that he finds some abnormality in the "bokeh". My question is what does "bokeh" supposed to look like- is there some preconceived idea of what shape or configuration all the out of focus elements are supposed to appear as. Perhaps this effect as shown is serendipitous to the scene, the lightning physical conditions of that scene at that moment and will never recur again. There may be some aspect of the lens design that brings this on under certain conditions.

I get the feeling that some photographers envision good "bokeh" as some kind of uniform special effect or repeatable look that can be added in during post-processing from a fixed app. It would be costly for the OP to send his equipment in for costly diagnosis and repair unless there is some recurring anomaly or some artifactual defect in the lens that is affecting all of his images. This could simply be a one-off occurrence.

My suggestion was simply to replicate the lighting, exposure and focus components and introduce some controlled interference and observe the results.

What follows is why so many on the Hog Forum regard me as a jerk. It does not bother me one bit. When one is truly a master of your discipline then one learns to deal with the envious regards from the lesser practitioners in ones field.

The effect is generally in the realms of that category of what you are calling bokeh, but it is merely an effect and not the 'reason' for what you are seeing. There is nothing malfunctioning with your lens that this image is displaying.

Now the boring didactic part of this story/explanation. Everyone has heard of the golden means, also the Fibonacci principle. That Fibonacci principle is attributed to an Italian story about I guy who championed the principle of what is also referred to as the golden means. Essentially the golden means is a FOUNDATION of the active principle that governs the way our world works. The growth, the PATTERN of that growth in the natural world follows this interesting pattern. The way leaves grow on a stem and branch from weeds to giant elm trees, that pattern is followed. It is encoded in the life structure from a single leaf and the spiral of a snails shell. So there is an inherent pattern created by the plants leaves and the pattern you are seeing in this display, be it called bokeh or golden means it is the outcome of the inherent pattern that leaves exhibit as they break up the beams of light flowing through the tree's leaf pattern.

An additional didactic reference for this can be found by looking up a rather unique photographic lens made by Schneider called the Imagon. To achieve the 'soft focus' effects of the Imagon a device is installed in the front of the lens called an 'airy diffusion disk'. This is the part of the Imagon lens that creates effects like those you see in your image sun light through the tree's levees. In some images where a direct light source is shown in the photograph, the airy diffusion disk may show as a cluster of tiny points of light as seen as circles if the lens disk is dialed fully open or as partial crescents if closed down.

I found several images associated with the Imagon lens. The first shows the effect in the Christmas tree lights, especially to the right of the image. The second image shows the extreme effect most call bokeh and are the repeating pattern of diffraction with interference of light waves generated by the shaping pattern by a simple lens. The third images shows the Imagon airy diffusion disk and the light pattern it generates when in use. The last image is of an Imagon lens with it's airy diffusion discs.

To end this, the pattern you are seeing is the natural patterning of sunlight as it passes through leaves that interfere with that light and are creating a 'pattern' that is inherently made up of a pattern that you are seeing based on the golden means. Your natural and biological response to this pattern is built into the biological structure of your own body. Congratulation! You are a living being who for a moment has connected to the natural structure of the world in which you are part! I know, way to Pagan for the Hog! LOL!!!

All the images shown are from the internet, they are not my photographs.

Could the problem be similar to the phenomena depicted in this picture? Notice three twigs that are in the foreground at two, five and nine o'clock that appear to be translucent. The wind wasn't blowing by any noticeable amount and the shutter speed was 1/250.

I've checked store original but "Download" does not appear so if it is not there when I send it I will resend. I was shooting RAW and jpg that day and this is the jpg straight out of the camera.

What caused the twigs to only partially obscure the focus points?