Sheila, When you use MACRO mode it allows you to shoot closeups images in a specified range (depending on you camera model and it optical zoom) On my G6 in Macro mode, I can shoot from 2 inches to 1.6 feet at the wide angle end and .5 ft to 1.6 feet at the telephoto end. As I understand it Macro and closeup photography are pretty much the same. Macro is used to get fill the frame of small objects as much as possible. Joe