Excellent edi­to­r­ial by Rob Spray for DPReview:

It’s very con­fus­ing, and all the more so as it’s the users who really get to test this stuff. Obviously there’s a cer­tain amount of ret­i­cence to test the lim­its amongst peo­ple with less money than sense and sim­ple lore tells you that pride comes before a fall. The cam­era that’s never taken to sea will never be filled with salt­wa­ter when a seal fails. Some of us have to work close to the lim­its; we need to take pic­tures at sea, in rain and snow or even under­wa­ter and many of us will have suf­fered casualties.

It’s funny how a cam­era, which is very much an out­door gear, requires all the cases, straps — pro­tec­tions — to be used in its nat­ural habi­tat: the out­door, with its unpre­dictable weather and ele­ment of surprises.

The basic bench­mark would be our own human body, a cam­era should be able to with­stand rea­son­able low, or high tem­per­a­ture, dust, moist, weather, water, phys­i­cal abuse, as much as a human body can with­stand. But the truth is far from it.

How long do you think it will take for our per­sonal elec­tronic devices — cam­eras included — to be outdoor-friendly? Will that day ever come?

Ruggedness is overrated.