Re: Are most lenses optimised for short distance focusing?

[Dario Bonazza]

I wrote:

Among the prime lenses, once you leave apart the macros, the portrait 
lenses and maybe the 50mm (also performing very well at close distance), 
there's not so much left below 300mm: just a few Pentax prime lenses below 
85mm are modern designs (20A/FA, 28FA, 31LTD, 35/2FA, 43LTD).

Maybe I must explain better the reason for quoting only above lenses among 
short primes.
Since I suspect the tendency of optimizing lenses at close distance to be 
rather modern, I'd stick to discussing lenses designed in the last 25 years, 
because I won't be surprised to find lenses optimized at infinity among 
older designs (which include 15 K/A, 28M/A, 35mm other than the FA, 40mm, 
etc.).

Dario