With apologies if this is covered elsewhere, but I could not find it.

I have read the manual and, as a newcomer to DSLR photography, I do not understand properly either how to use "P" or what it's benefits are. Originally, I had assumed that I could set things up, a bit like the scene presets for Portrait, Landscape, etc as P1, P2 so that when I was doing a particular type of activity, the various settings would be automatically recalled. Reading the manual, it seems that you can only have one program setting until you change it or turn the camera off.