@edmontonenthusiast: for the shutter speed, it's not correct what you are thinking that at 53mm you need to shoot 1/53 to freeze the photo. It's a guideline as to how fast you need to shoot given a certain lens size to prevent getting inadvertant blur from you yourself not being able to hold the camera steady enough. Smaller lenses (shorter in mm) are easier to hold steady, but it tends to hit about 1/60 when everyone has problems regardless. To summarize if the maximum mm on your lens is 300, you need to shoot 1/300 or faster (1/500, 1/1000) or you'll risk getting blurry pictures from general shaking while you hold the camera.
As far as flashes go. I am not the person to ask. I don't take pictures of people and I turn the flash off almost always. When you're getting shiney spots it's because the flash is too powerful for how close you are to the subject (it's reflecting and not illuminating at that point), so you need to step back and zoom in instead or you need to get a flash that you can tilt/swivel and bounce the flash off the ceiling of walls to illuminate the subject.
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