thanks everyone for the replies.
$300 is the most i can do...i'd love to afford better glass, but i recently bought the 70-200L & that busted my lens budget for a LONG time. lol

i'd be using the lens for portraits, usually shoot around f9-11 for those, so that's where i would like the sharpest picture to be. the cheap canon i'm using now is ok, i get sharp results, but i want something better!

thanks,
liz