As of the end of 2009 there's still no high quality photo/video hybrid camera available. The camera that currently comes close to the ideal is the Panasonic GH1. It offers a large sensor, has no mirror, live histogram, swiveling LCD, full manual video mode, silent autofocus while filming (with kit lens) and exchangable lenses. Unfortunately it also has some drawbacks:
It's a consumer model
That means no live HDMI out, no time lapse, poor audio preamp and only automatic gain audio control.
No IR remote control
You can remote control photo and video shooting with a remote cable but there's no IR remote sensor.
Only available as a kit with a slow lens.
You have to buy the bundle with the kit lens which opens up to just f4
AVCHD means 25p in a 50i wrapper
There's no 25p in the AVCHD specifications. 25p chopped up into 50i is unneccessarily complicated. NTSC models require pull down removal.
Bad codec implementation
The 17 Mbps of the GH1 are not as good as the 17 Mbps of lets say a Canon HF100 camcorder because there are no B frames.
Aliasing
Lack of processing power doesn't allow to scale the full sensor properly down. The actual resolution is that of a SD camera. It's not full raster HD. All DSLRs that shoot video have this drawback.
The Ballad of the GH1 tells the sad story.
Let's look forward to the GH2.
