Only if they're fast. Slow objectives would get by with lenses from e.g. regular eyeglasses arbitrary-aspheric production lines.
It only gets expensive (>1000$) when you need fancy glass elements (or manage to waste a lot of money on inefficient R&D... computers are really good these days, and at least for fixed-focus prime lenses (you want 1:1, right?) the parameter space is fairly small.
I can highly recommend [0] for some reading on how simple optics can be if you can optimize aspherics for a fixed focus. Just to state the obvious: two identical infinity-focused objectives can be placed with the infinity-corrected sides looking straight towards another, for a physically long 1:1 macro "lens".
I wonder if there is a decent topology for a decently-high-NA reflective objective in the 1:1 to 1:10 (object:sensor) magnification range.
And also whether some of those topologies would cope with a (sensor-sized) reflective spatial light modulator (LCoS/DLP would seem most practically relevant) in place of the sensor.
I still get that mouth-watering imagination when thinking about direct digital (maskless) photolithography, as the flexibility is enormous, especially regarding rapid prototyping of highly integrated circuits (350 nm is the limit for single-patterning using aluminium-coated MEMS modulators (aka TI's DLP technology), due to the UV reflectivity drop below 400 nm and thermal limits of the MEMS device).
[0]: https://www.telescope-optics.net/
I can highly recommend [0] for some reading on how simple optics can be if you can optimize aspherics for a fixed focus. Just to state the obvious: two identical infinity-focused objectives can be placed with the infinity-corrected sides looking straight towards another, for a physically long 1:1 macro "lens".
I wonder if there is a decent topology for a decently-high-NA reflective objective in the 1:1 to 1:10 (object:sensor) magnification range. And also whether some of those topologies would cope with a (sensor-sized) reflective spatial light modulator (LCoS/DLP would seem most practically relevant) in place of the sensor.
I still get that mouth-watering imagination when thinking about direct digital (maskless) photolithography, as the flexibility is enormous, especially regarding rapid prototyping of highly integrated circuits (350 nm is the limit for single-patterning using aluminium-coated MEMS modulators (aka TI's DLP technology), due to the UV reflectivity drop below 400 nm and thermal limits of the MEMS device).
[0]: https://www.telescope-optics.net/