[Mooncatt]

5) pixie dust added in last stages of manufacturing.

And this is the most important part!

[Wasp]

Macro lenses are slow and expensive. That is the trade off for being sharp. All lens designs have to compromise one thing in order to have something else.

Want cheap and sharp? OK but not wide open, f/8 works best. Fast and sharp wide open? You can have that but it will not be cheap. Et cetera.

[stevebrot]

Because they have to be in order to meet market expectations and target usage. A soft macro lens is dead at the starting gate. The general requirements are exceptional flat field, sharp across entire frame, exceptional dimensional fidelity, and ease of focus at higher magnifications. The clue is that they are not just used for taking photos of flowers and bugs. A core use case is for accurate reproductions of things like stamps, coins, photographic negatives, and biological materials.


Steve

[ivar_bg]

From my garden, Pentax K-5 II, Tamron 18-250

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[aaacb]

Since I use my macro lenses as all rounders in many more situations than macro photography,
Why are some of the other lenses so soft :P

[Reality_Check]

1) designs : they’re optimized for sharpness across the frame.

2) moderate open aperture (f2.8 or 4 being very common)

3) commonly made in normal/telephoto focal length (reduces challenges)

4) mature tested optical designs

5) pixie dust added in last stages of manufacturing.

Pixie dust. I knew it! Thanks for the laugh :-)

[DWS1]

They are designed to sharp edge to edge by having a flatter plane of focus. I also believe some of the extra sharpness is due to the fact most subjects are a very short distance away from the lens. Whereas with a non macro lens the subject is farther away. Just like with your own eyes the closer you are to something the more detail you can see.

[Digitalis]

who wants to take soft macros?

Someone who needs as much DoF as possible f/48 is well in the depths of diffraction territory and image stacking can't be used for every subject.

[vonBaloney]

Someone who needs as much DoF as possible f/48 is well in the depths of diffraction territory and image stacking can't be used for every subject.

Well, that's just the tradeoff you have to accept, so then it becomes even more important that the lens is as sharp as possible in the first place.

[aslyfox]

Of course not all " Macro ".lenses are equal

True macro is 1:1

Other " macro " are not

[dneira29]

because they make micro details macro! Follow me for more tips hahah

[5ks]

THIS ! and exactly this. Every decent lens can be sharp edge to edge if the objects in front of it is arrange on the FOF of the lens (given the aperture) . Quite a few make buying decisions based on resolution charts (which are flat, ususally) , which may not translate into real world resolution and sharpness. Take the wonderful Pentax FF Limited series for example.

Even more complex with fisheye lenses, I guess.
But yes, and unfortunately it probably is very hard to measure the "true sharpness" of a lens having big field curvature. That said, I like the great sharpness my macro lenses very much.

[Digitalis]

it becomes even more important that the lens is as sharp as possible in the first place.

When stopped down to f/48, all lenses are equally horrible. Though depending on the size of the recording medium involved the differences will not be so apparent.

[UncleVanya]

When stopped down to f/48, all lenses are equally horrible. Though depending on the size of the recording medium involved the differences will not be so apparent.

Every lens? Group f/64 - Wikipedia

Lol. I know what you mean of course.

[ehrwien]

Of course not all " Macro ".lenses are equal

Some are more equal