Wide primes - 20mm / 24mm / 28mm - anyone got one?

[Raider]

Since I can't really justify spending £700 on a 100-300mm F4, I thought I might instead get a nice wide prime which I can use outdoors, and more importantly indoors at low F-numbers.

I'm mainly looking at the Canon primes:

20mm F2.8 USM
24mm F2.8
28mm F1.8 USM

All are around £320, so not too pricey considering it would be of use at parties / meals as well as for outdoor stuff.
The 20mm F2.8 USM has the nice wide angle, but the reviews seem a bit mixed, with many saying that it's a bit soft at F2.8, which kind of defeats the point.
The 24mm F2.8 seems to be sharper at F2.8, but you lose the extra angle of the 20mm. The 28mm F1.8 looks very nice, BUT the view angle is quite a bit smaller than the 18mm I'm used to outside.

So does anybody have any experience of these? Ta

 

[Shootist]

I have the 20mm f2.8. I originally purchased it to compensate for the 1.6x crop factor on my D60 ( fov equivalent to a 32mm) and have now tried it on my 1DsMk2 and I like it a lot. It can be soft towards the corners but I haven't considered it a problem really.
Take a look at this pic as an example of the quality and make your own mind up. I would try and get a decent camera shop to let you do a few test shots yourself.

http://gordon-walker.fotopic.net/p19222994.html
http://gordon-walker.fotopic.net/p16784503.html
http://gordon-walker.fotopic.net/p16784494.html

 

[Sleepyd]

Persoanlly I think you're better off buying a third party 2.8 zoom. It has been a very long time since Canon touched those primes in terms of design, and a lot of the zooms in that price and focal range match their performance when wide open.