^^BD ur basic idea of macro is flawed. Macro is for blowing up subjects extremely close to the camera. These images are telephoto where the subject is far far away from the camera. In telephoto, you typically focus at infinity. In macro, you focus at the closest focussing distance of the particular lens. Infact you get fixed focal length primes which are designed specifically for macro photography. These are the best for macro. To get blurred backgrounds, what you need is to use a large aperture i.e. a low f-number. If you do that, you get a shallow depth of field which leads to the background blurring. Plus when using a shallow DOF,the number of blades in the lens decides how smooth the background blur (called bokeh) is. The larger the number of blades, the better and smoother the bokeh. So typically portrait lens will support a very large aperture and also have a large number of blades but these are mostly very very expensive. For eg the Canon 85mm f/1.2L lens which is considered by most as the best portrait lens on planet earth costs over 2000$.