100mm f/2.8 macro - repair or just replace?

I have a Canon Rebel T2i and for many years I have been content shooting with my EF 50mm f/1.4 USM and my EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro. I do have the EF-S 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 IS lens that came with the body but I have stopped using it. In the past year or so I have started using Adobe Lightroom for editing and I have become more critical of my work. I stopped using the 18-55 as I understand it is a poorer quality lens and image quality is important to me. I shoot mostly macro nature shots, portraits (usually outdoors), and architectural type shots. Although I like the ease of a zoom lens I am more concerned with image quality and I have been quite content using just the two primes.

So, yesterday I became aware of the fairly noticeable chromatic aberration with one of my photos taken with the 100mm. I also noticed that Lightroom has been using the wrong default lens profile. It has been using the 100mm f/2.8 not the 100mm f/2.8 Macro. Even when I manually adjusted the lens profile it did not change the amount of fringing. It is quite severe. So I went back through all my digital photos that I have shot with this lens and it I was able to detect fringing (viewed at 1:1) on ALL the photos. It does not matter what type of lighting or what aperture I used. I was truly surprised and even more surprised that I somehow didn't notice it until now.

I know this is an older lens. Is this just a normal problem with the lens? I live in a very small town so I am not sure I can even have my camera and lens serviced easily. Is it worth trying to fix? Or should I just suck it up and buy a new lens? I shoot in RAW and I import directly into Lightroom. Should I be importing first through some Canon software? Would that handle the corrections better?

For now I will just use the lens when shooting black and white. I am too frustrated to use it and manually correct the fringing on each shot.

I tend to be lazy about bringing a tripod with me so I end up handholding most of my shots. I know that the newer 100mm Macro has IS and would probably benefit me greatly. At the moment I have the money for one good lens. I'd rather use the money to get a great quality lens that I can be happy with for the next few years. I don't anticipate purchasing anything else for a few years. (Photography is purely a hobby for me). I have also briefly looked at a few other IS zooms but being able to shoot in low light situations is also important to me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I appreciate and comments and suggestions you might be able to offer me.

Will CH wrote:

... So, yesterday I became aware of the fairly noticeable chromatic aberration with one of my photos taken with the 100mm. I also noticed that Lightroom has been using the wrong default lens profile. It has been using the 100mm f/2.8 not the 100mm f/2.8 Macro.

? All three of the EF 100 f/2.8, EF 100 f/2.8 USM, and EF 100 f/2.8L IS USM lenses are Macro.

Even when I manually adjusted the lens profile it did not change the amount of fringing. It is quite severe. So I went back through all my digital photos that I have shot with this lens and it I was able to detect fringing (viewed at 1:1) on ALL the photos. It does not matter what type of lighting or what aperture I used. I was truly surprised and even more surprised that I somehow didn't notice it until now.

Is it worse than demonstrated in this review?

http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff/489-canon_100_28_5d?start=1

Is it noticeable in your pics when viewed/printed normally and not looking for it by viewing at 1:1?

Lemming51 wrote:

Will CH wrote:

... So, yesterday I became aware of the fairly noticeable chromatic aberration with one of my photos taken with the 100mm. I also noticed that Lightroom has been using the wrong default lens profile. It has been using the 100mm f/2.8 not the 100mm f/2.8 Macro.

? All three of the EF 100 f/2.8, EF 100 f/2.8 USM, and EF 100 f/2.8L IS USM lenses are Macro.

Sorry, my mistake. Lightroom has been automatically using the Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM lens profile instead of the EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM profile.

Is it worse than demonstrated in this review?

http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff/489-canon_100_28_5d?start=1

Is it noticeable in your pics when viewed/printed normally and not looking for it by viewing at 1:1?

I suppose it isn't much worse than demonstrated in that review. What I see on my photos is the green and purple fringing. I didn't realize that so much aberration was considered normal. Now that I know it is there I do think I can see it when I view my photos at a normal size. However, thank you for directing me to that page. It seems to suggest that at f/4 the problem is nearly corrected. I've been analyzing my photos more and it seems that I do tend to shoot with this lens mostly in the f/2.8-f/4 zone. I will experiment more this week and see how it performs above f/4.

Thank you so much for your response. This is very helpful information for me to work with. Perhaps now I can keep the lens and maybe use the money for a different lens.