Well the truth is that my KP had never been near salt water and nothing had been spilled over it (as far as I know). I mulled over the evidence for some time racking my brain trying to establish how the hell this mess happened. Part of the reason for me accepting the Ricoh offer of a 50% discount was that I couldn't easily prove there was no user miss-operation involved. Without doing some kind of analysis on the precipitate and having a closer look at the dismantled camera I can't add any more evidence to my version of events. The camera was used in falling snow > the snow had settled lightly on the top of the camera during use> there was a delay of around an hour before the exterior of the camera was dried thoroughly with paper towel > the camera was then left for around ten days before it was used again and the fault discovered > the camera may have been accidentally left switched on with the battery in (not good I know). In a previous life I was a telecommunications engineer and I often saw similar looking damage to circuit boards in PBXs and other telecoms kit that have got damp in use or during careless storage, the usual cause of the mess was assumed to be corrosion or the disintegration of board components due to the dampness, even perhaps a form of electrolysis. Water does not need help from salts or minerals to wreak havoc on electronics, plain old H2O can do the job all on it's own (see:
Corrosion in Printed Circuit Boards ? Tempo Automation ? Medium). Whatever happened, the camera leaked!!!