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Is it possible to control aperture a little bit on a non-SLR digital camera? (10 points)?

I'm taking photography 101 at college, and for our next assignment we have to shoot pictures with different depths of field. People (like me) with digital cameras that aren't SLR are being told to use portrait mode for larger aperture (less DOF) and landscape mode for smaller aperture (more DOF). I obviously can't find anything on my camera that will let me control aperture, but when I take a picture I do see an f-stop number on the LCD viewfinder screen, and that number doesn't seem to change much whether I focus on a subject in portrait mode or landscape mode.
How can I get more control over my aperture?

The macro setting may make a difference.

The depth of field is affected by the aperture, the focal length and the distance of the subject and the background from the camera. The longer the focal length, and the more distance between the subject and the background, the more background blur you will get.

So try this for shallow depth of field. Get the subject as far from the background as you can. Zoom in and then back up to compose the shot. Now you should see a difference when shooting in portrait mode.

Alternately, for wide depth of field, use the landscape mode, zoom out to the widest angle possible and move forward if you need to in order to compose the shot. You should see a much sharper scene overall.

Try both of these out and see if you are seeing a noticeable difference in your images.

edit-Unless you want unflattering facial distortion, never ever shoot a portrait at a wide angle. It makes the nose look huge. The best focal length range for portrats is 75-135mm. Because you have a compact which has a much smaller sensor than a 35mm format your camera will have a much different range listed. But you should be able to zoom to at least the 75mm equivalent. Try looking up your camera in the side-to-side buying guide on dpreview.com to see the 35mm equivalent zoom range on your camera.

What was suggested about changing ISO can help too. Just pay attention to what it does. If you lower the ISO to 100 the camera will have to adjust to compensate. If you are in portrait mode, I would assume that it would open up the aperture and that is what you would want. But if it decides to adjust by using a longer shutter speed you may not get as shallow a depth of field as you would like.

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