Yes I think your talking about the Sony DSLR A-100 which is practically an SLR, but just no swapping the lense. That camera e has very nice performance and Sony makes really good CCd's as a matter of fact it was romured that the ccd in some early Nikon DSLR's were made by Sony. I think the reason they made a camera with 98% of a SLR features, but not make it an SLR is because they dont have a lens market. But it still has a mirror, and like you said it continually shows you the image through the viewfinder which is a little monitor.

Yes, the two I am talking about are the DSLR-A100 (Digital SLR) and the DSC-R1 (Point and Shoot). The DSLR-A100 is an SLR though (with swappable lens), the base unit is sold without the lens. You must either buy it separately or buy the package which includes the lens.

The DSLR-A100 has a SLIGHTLY bigger CCD sensor in it than the DSC-R1 (mostly because it is a newer camera), but those are Sony's highest end digital cameras and they have comparable technologies, just one is an SLR and one isn't. The DSLR-A100 is 10.2 MP while the DSC-R1 is 10.3 MP. The only thing I don't like about the DSC-R1 is that it doesn't do videos. SLR's can't do videos because they are SLR's, but there is no reason why the DSC-R1 couldn't do video. My feeling which gets me angry is that Sony probably didn't include that feature because they figured if you can afford this camera, you can afford a video camera.

I think it is probably difficult to compare a digital camera with an optical camera, picture quality wise as they have completely different mediums. With an optical camera, you are using a certain quality file with a certain quality prints which are made from the film used. The quality can be different in each of those. In addition, if you compare that to a digital picture, you are then displaying a digital picture through a photo editor which is then displaying on a varying quality monitor. Even the best quality film and prints and comparing that to a digital picture on a $1000 monitor is probably difficult as you still have contrast differences and so forth. The DSC-V1 is not being made anymore and was a decent digital camera for the time, Sony has improved their cameras quite a bit since from reading the reviews. Sony does use the Carl Zeiss lens in all of their top end non-SLR cameras, I'm not sure if the quality problems you are referring to are from the lens or from the CCD, microprocessor, or anything else specific to the model camera.

With the DSLR-A100, you have a good range of lens you should be able to use. The camera uses the same mount as the Minolta cameras, so you can use any of the various lens Sony offers (which I believe are all Carl Zeiss), or anything compatible with the Minolta.