I am interested in taking portrait shots with a shallow depth of field (blurred background). Does the Canon S5 have adequate aperture settings to accomplish this? If not, I would consider exchanging the S5 for aCanon XT or XTi if the kit lens would be sufficient, but I don't want to have to spend a fortune upgrading the lens. How does the S5 compare to the kit lens on the XT or XTi? Any feedback would be appreciated.

No P&S will have as shallow a DOF as a DSLR. On the other hand if you can sufficiently control the situation such that the background is much farther away from the subject than the camera is from the subject an S5 might work for your purposes.

Just to add:

shallow DOF is not just controlled by aperture. Sensor size plays a huge part in it as well. In all there are4 factors which contribute

• Sensor Size[/*]
• Aperture[/*]
• Focal length[/*]
• Distance from you to your subject

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All play a part. Also as the other poster mentioned, creating more distance between your subject and their background will help to get a blurred background.

Using any camera/lens you'll get the shallowest dof with the most zoom. However that isn't always very practical. You can't always stand 30 feet away when doing a head shot.

But don't forget - the kit lens on a DSLR isn't going to really give you a shallow DOF affect. Typically lenses like a 50mm 1.4, 85mm 1.8, 85mm 1.4, 135mm 2.0 or 70-200 2.8 are employed for shallow dof portraiture.