Let's see some ISO 1600 shots, or how about shots at 640mm focal length
(35mm equivalent)?

Who said it was a Mavica? Fool.

My Sony P&S has more megapixels and higher resolution than your DSLR and can
take photos in the pitch-black using only IR. Surpassing your ancient DSLR in
every respect.

Jealous? You should be.

How about posting some of those Mavica shots so we can have a laugh
(oops, I meant a "look").

Another resounding reason (among dozens) of why I went with advanced P&S cameras
instead of DSLRs when I switched from film to digital. On my Sony I can shoot
with flash (IN SYNC) up to 1/2000th of a second. Using shutter speeds above
1/500th of a second to even alter the strength of flash I'm exposing for. On my
Canon S3 I can shoot (IN SYNC) up to 1/500th of a second, even in 1st and 2nd
curtain modes. There's just no getting around last century's SLR mechanical
shutter & mirror-slap technology when you go the DSLR route. It's a shame that
so many are still hoping that DSLRs will be able to incorporate digital imaging
technology to its fullest. They keep giving manufacturers excuses and a fool's
financial-incentive to put R&D into DSLRs instead of surpassing them with more
advanced P&S cameras, from which we will all benefit.

$Don't know why canon won't allow it even in manual mode. Why is it called
$manual mode if the shutter speed is changed automatically for me??

  Remember that the output of a flash is controlled not by adjusting
its intensity but by adjusting its duration.  The more power you want,
the longer the flash is on.  The camera's maximum X-sync speed has to
be designed such that it will not cause problems with the longest
possible flash burst, which will depend on the flash unit but is
usually more than 1 ms and perhaps as much as 2 ms.  With the flash
taking that long, that means that in order to achieve a maximum X-sync
speed of 1/250, the shutter curtains must be able to make their full
motion in 2 ms (during the first 2 ms, the first curtain opens; for
the next 2 ms, the shutter is fully open; during the next 2 ms, the
second curtain closes).  2 ms isn't a lot of time to take a physical
device, accelerate it from rest to full speed and have it
traverse the opening.

  Chances are that if you fire a full-power flash burst with the
shutter speed set to 1/320, the second curtain is going to start
closing before the flash has completed firing.  Now, since flash
output rises rapidly and falls slowly, the part of the flash burst
that you're blocking as the second curtain starts to close is quite
dim and likely will be very hard to spot in the results - but it's
nevertheless not syncing correctly.

  On the other hand, if you fire a partial-power burst, it will take
quite a bit less time, perhaps much less than 1 ms, and in this case
there *is* enough time for the flash to complete before the second
curtain starts to close, even at a shutter speed above maximum X-sync.

  As for why the camera doesn't allow you to pick a higher sync speed
at least some of the time, well, the camera doesn't know how long the
flash burst will be.  That's controlled by the flash.  And the flash
may not know, either; among other things, it depends on whether you let
the capacitor charge fully before firing the flash.  The camera and
the flash don't even know at what strength to fire the flash until
flash metering is done, which (unless you use flash exposure lock)
doesn't happen until after the ambient exposure value has already
been set.

  Anyway, the bottom line is that the camera's specs clearly indicate
that 1/250 is the maximum X-sync speed.  If you expected something
else, you were mistaken.  If you absolutely need to use a flash along
with a shutter speed that's only a third of a stop above what the
specs say, go ahead and use a non-dedicated flash (the camera doesn't
know it's there and therefore will not impose the maximum X-sync
limit) and hope for the best.

------------------------------------------------------------------
    Say hi to my cat -- http://www.stevedunn.ca/photos/toby/

I don't want to, that why I turn it off.
High speed sync is less powerful than low speed sync. Cheating the sync
speed is equivalent to boosting the flash's output power when used as a fill
flash.

Don't know why canon won't allow it even in manual mode. Why is it called
manual mode if the shutter speed is changed automatically for me??

Turn high speed sync on. That's why they call it high speed sync.

When I attach a canon speedlite 550ex (high speed sync off) on a 20D, the
shutter speed automatically reduced to 1/250s if I had it faster.

Is there a way to override this?

I found by experiment, I can flash sync at 1/320s (the experiment is done
with a 3rd party flash that does not change the shutter speed). So I would
like to use this speed with the canon speedlite, but it won't let me.

Any ideas? I checked all the custom functions and none of them look like it
would help.