The influences of various laser modes on the splitting beam effect of Dammann grating are studied in theory and by numerical simulation. The results show that fundamental mode laser resembles plane wave while high order mode laser differs from plane wave in the splitting beam effect by Dammann grating. Therefore, the fundamental mode laser is more suitable to be the light source to improve the energy efficiency in far-distance image detecting systems, such as laser image ladar, which use Dammann grating in the illumination system.