Auto mode tells your camera to use its best judgement to select shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, focus and flash to take the best shot that it can. This mode will give you nice results in many shooting conditions.

Portrait mode your camera will automatically select a large aperture (small number) which helps to keep your background out of focus. Portrait mode works best when you’re photographing a single subject so get in close enough to your subject.

Macro mode lets you move your closer into your subject to take a close-up picture. It’s great for shooting flowers, insects or other small objects. When you use macro mode, you’ll notice that focusing is more difficult as at short distances the depth of field is very narrow.

Landscape mode This mode is almost the exact opposite of portrait mode in that it sets the camera up with a small aperture (large number) to make sure as much of the scene you’re photographing will be in focus as possible.

Sports mode attempts to freeze the action by increasing the shutter speed.  It is ideal for photographing any moving objects including people playing sports, pets, cars, wildlife etc.

Night mode is for shooting in low light situations and sets your camera to use a longer shutter speed to help capture details of the background, it also fires off a flash to illuminate the foreground (and subject).

Movie mode This mode extends your digital camera from just capturing still images to capturing moving ones.

Aperture Priority mode (A or AV) is really a semi-automatic (or semi-manual) mode where you choose the aperture and where your camera chooses the other settings (shutter speed, white balance, ISO etc.) to ensure you have a well-balanced exposure.

Shutter Priority Mode (S or TV) is very similar to aperture priority mode but is the mode where you select a shutter speed, and the camera then chooses all the other settings.

Program Mode is like Auto but gives you a little more control over some other features including flash, white balance, ISO etc.

Manual Mode you have full control over your camera and need to think about all settings including shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, flash etc.