A bit more expanded on dSLR, it's is "like a normal film camera" but also int he sense of any Digital camera is. Theprimary difference is that SLR camera have a mirror that takes the images you see comming through the lense and reflects it up to the eyepiece. The result is that you're seeing what the lens sees as the lens sees it. When you press the button, the mirror is quickly lifted out of the way which si why the eyepiece goes black when using an SLR. This is the primary difference and advantage (though this advantage is slowly being made obsolete by things like LCDs in the eyepiece.
The other more generic difference, si that SLR's ususually have a wide variety of interchangeable lenses. These aren't just nessesarily attachments to an existing lens but often will be a complete removal of the lens to be replaced with another one. Also for the most part SLR camera allow the ability of manually focusing the camera. Most modern SLRs, especially digital ones, also have a setting for automatic focusing. This is of course useful because it's generally faster than auto focus and it can be focused on what the photographer wants it to be focused on, not what the camera thinks should be the focus.
SLR camreas also generally allow more control over various settings such as shutter speed and aperature though many modern non SLR cameras feature these settings as well.
I have an SLR film camera but not a digital one. Eventually I plan to upgrade to the Sony Alpha since it's compatible with the lenses I allready own for my Minolta.
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