Originally posted by wildman "What does "weather-resistant" really mean?"
What it means to me is that, all else being equal, I'm probably better off with a camera that claims to be "weather-resistant" than one that does not.
I think wildman's answer is the best. Weather resistance seems like a good thing to have: but there's no warranty involved, and no precise line that you should not go past. It's very hard to say what you can safely do with a K20D that you would be stupid to do with, say, a Canon 5D (which isn't weather resistant, if I recall) or any other camera that isn't weather resistant or weatherproof.
Some photographers here reported that they've shot outdoors in the pouring rain, without damage to the camera. I'm happy for them. I've had to walk through a light rain a couple of times with my K10D and/or K20D in my hand. If it starts to sprinkle, I don't freak out like the Wicked Witch of the West (the one that Dorothy melted accidentally in the Wizard of Oz). But I can't afford to push my luck, so I head for cover as quickly as I can. When I'm hiking, I always bring a plastic bag for the camera. Shooting whooping cranes down in Port Aransas, Texas, I was out on a boat in the salt water. When the boat started to move and the spray came up, I put the camera into my bag and later, I removed it from the bag carefully. Shooting swimming events, I have a drying cloth handy. If the camera gets splashed, I wipe it off right away.
So I do not personally regard it as a license to play in the rain. If I were shooting monsoons for National Geographic and really had a good motive to be out in the rain, I'd get a truly water proof camera. Like wildman, I regard the weather resistance of the K10D/K20D mainly as an aspect of the solid build of the camera, which is a very good thing even if there's not a cloud in the sky.
Will