to clarify   not what SLR stands for,  but what SLR means in terms of the
camera i.e. the differences over a normal digital camera

TIA

guys
just came in from fishing.....guess a northern bit my hook in half this
morning....happened before
now to answer ur question---CANON
SLR----SINGLE LENS REFLEX--DIGITAL CAMERA
EOS---CANON 35mm Series cameras
Power Shot----digital
sure shot----35mm
Really got into digital when my daughter sent me fotos of a live volcano in
Hawaii, my friend sent pics of deer in his backyard, and my son came home
from Ireland and Europe and wouldnt let me normally hold all 35 rolls of
pics....exactly....what is the sense of taking stuff when u get to picky
about it.....
digital is more flexable...can come in from out in the cold, take the flash
card out and put it into the printer and presto u got ur pics, can now
download them into ur cdrw, or make fast prints, or even a tee shirt.....
canon sure shot 35 mm camera is a neat camera...got it for my wife...hard to
download quality pics with it and send them over the internet....still use
my polaroid for record keeping and the like....Canon SLR or EOS is for those
who are into photography in a big way and dont mind paying $1000 to 1500 or
more...
Power Shot is an all around tool.250--400...Sony got a couple of smaller
digital cameras i like but since i dont own one cant comment on
them....Anyone who has Netscape has a great browser for receiving digital
photos followed by microsoft, opera, adelphia, yahoo...and then the
rest.....excite etc...
hope this answers ur questions
crusty old feller

SLR stands for "single lens reflex"
This is an out of date technique of being able to look through the same lens
as the picture will be taken from. This means there is a lens that has to
slap out of the way when the picture is taken for the lens to be used for
the shot. This isn't necessary for digital pictures. Digital cam users do
not "close their eyes" when they take a picture like SLR users do.

Much mechanical alignment technique is required by a skilled camera tech to
align what you see is what you get and the alignment is critical with this
mirror technique Most DigiCam users always look through the lens that will
take the picture and see what they will actually shoot, with light
compensation in place before the shot.

Some day these SLR cameras will only be seen in museums and we will be
bewildered by the ancient mechanical nightmare mechanism technology.

Plus no preview of recorded Image, puts me right off.

Yes read a review of the Canon 350D   and you can't even use the Histogram
when shooting  or LCD screen.

Are all SLR Digital cameras like this..?

Are you referring to Digital SLR  as that is what most replies  seem to think.

Digital  SLR like the Nikon F70 or Canon 350D  

These are budget models..

There are three important differences between digital SLRs and advanced
compact digital cameras that look a lot like SLRs ... but only the first
one is actually part of the SLR design.

SLR stands for "single-lens reflex", and describes the type of
viewfinder.  An SLR uses a mirror directly in front of the shutter that
bounces light to a prism which in turn directs it to the eyepiece where
you see it.  Since the mirror intercepts the light coming through the
actual picture-taking lens, you see what the film or digital image
sensor will see; when you press the shutter release the mirror flips out
of the way just before the shutter opens, and the light coming through
the lens passes through to the film or sensor.  The eyepiece blacks out
until the shutter closes and the mirror returns to its original
position.  Since an SLR's viewfinder is strictly optical, it doesn't
drain batteries.  But because you cannot see what the camera sees during
exposure -- meaning you can't adjust focus, exposure or even aiming --
no digital SLR includes a "movie" mode.

Some advanced digital compacts use electronic viewfinders (EVFs) that
essentially use a tiny LCD display in the eyepiece and show you exactly
what the image sensor sees -- it's very SLR-like, since it also shows
exactly what the picture-taking lens sees.  The EVF may or may not black
out during the time that the image sensor is recording the image into
memory.  Some cameras that use EVFs can send the sensor's image-data to
the eyepiece and memory simultaneously in "movie" mode.  But EVFs
require power continuously when in use, not just when you're actually
taking pictures.  This may result in fewer shots per battery charge; you
may need to carry a spare battery or two, although that's usually a good
idea with any digital camera.  (For obvious reasons, film cameras don't
have EVFs.)

Other compact cameras use a simple optical viewfinder that has its own
tiny separate lens mounted near the picture-taking lens.  While these
viewfinders don't drain batteries, neither do they show exactly what the
picture-taking lens "sees".  Most of them work well enough for casual
snapshooting, but they can't be as precise as a viewfinder that uses the
actual picture-taking lens.

The second big difference between digital SLRs and non-SLRs is that
every digital SLR I've heard of uses interchangeable lenses while nearly
all non-SLR digitals have permanently-attached lenses.  If the lens that
comes with your digital SLR can't quite get that particular wide-angle
or telephoto shot you want, you can remove it from the camera body and
replace it with one that's better suited to the task; you can't do that
with a fixed lens, although some of the better digital compacts
accommodate adapter lenses that help extend the fixed lens's
capabilities a bit.

The third important difference actually has more to do with the size and
price of the camera than anything else -- and digital SLRs are generally
both larger and more expensive than digital compacts.  As a rule,
digital SLRs use physically larger image sensors than compacts; the more
expensive (and usually larger) SLRs usually have larger sensors than
their less expensive kin.  When everything else (including the number of
pixels) is the same, a larger sensor means less digital noise in the
captured image.  This may not matter much if your primary interest is
taking snapshots that won't be printed any larger than 4x6 or 5x7, but
it's a very important consideration if you need high quality that lets
you see fine detail or make large prints.

No one camera has the perfect combination of features for every
photographic situation, which is why there are so many different cameras
to choose from.  It's your job to decide just which features are most
important to you, then find the camera or cameras that best fit your
requirements.