looking for great 6mp or less portrait P&S camera

any suggestions? new or used. portraits are the only thing i want this
camera to excel in. therefor, good at full aperture, and a great lens. i
already have a DSLR, so i want a P&S that will do the trick in a bind.

 

I would say you need a camera with a manual aperture setting. The only
P&S cameras I know of like this are some of the high end Fuji Film ones.
Check Dpreview.com for some reviews of them.

 

My Canon A620 has a manual aperture setting. It's 7.1MP, inexpensive
now that the A630 and A640 have come out. The on-camera flash isn't
good for portraits, though.

 

Choose an aperture, e.g.f=11, that will cause the puny on-camera flash
to contribute very little to the overall exposure. The flash will,
however, be bright enough to trigger one or more strong slaves to
actually provide the correct exposure.
Bob Williams

 

It does rather depend what you mean by portraits, doesn't it? Take a look
here for some great people shots - all done with a P&S.

http://www.larry-bolch.com/CP8400/

David

 

If the A620 is anything like my A75, you can set it up in manual
mode, thus choosing any lens opening within its range, and then also
control the flash output manually. I find if I set it to 1/3 flash
output (the minimum), it's enough to trigger an outboard flash which
will provide most of the illumination. Nice thing about this mode is
that there's no pre-flash so a standard slave works fine.
I have an A630 but haven't tested its manual mode yet. I notice it
also allows manual control of flash output in several of the automatic
modes, but I don't know whether this means it also dispenses with the
pre-flash. Obviously I need to do some testing, unless someone has
already checked this out ... ?

-- Ron