from my experience working for a small sweedish camera company in new jersey where i handled merchandise returns from camera dealers including the new york city big dealers what most likely occured was that a low volume dealer ordered it and it sat on their shelf for over a year until they finally returned it to nikon for credit. When nikon received it they inspected it and put it back into their inventory or sent it to be checked out by the service department and they might have reset the shutter count while testing the camera. the camera was put back into new stock and B&H received the camera by the luck of the draw from nikon. This is what i thing happened with your purchase.

JimF said:
However he did tell me it was manufactured sometime between July 2008 and the date I bought it. No kidding! I thought that was funny.

Hahaha! So you didn't get one of those time-traveling cameras, huh?

Good joke about July 2008 and the date you bought it, Nikon started D700 production in July 2008 so every single one is made somewhere between then and today (if it is still in production).
I would not be too upset about the whole thing though as long as you have full warranty.

Oh geez, now I started something. Sorry. :)

Great post. I bought my D700 at Christmas time last year and never considered this so I'll have to check into this...

Update:
I called Nikon today. Bottom line is there is no 100% reliable method to determine total number of shutter actuations. The tech basically restated what Niko had quoted. But he did admit that firmware updates don't necessarily reset the shutter count. This seems to agree with my experience when updating my camera to the 1.02 firmware. I'm almost positive it did not reset my shutter actuation count. That's not proof however that an earlier update could not have reset it. He also said something about power surges/glitches can cause the count to either reset or get set to basically a random number.

I also asked if there was a way to tell the manufacturing date given the serial number. Answer: no there is not. However he did tell me it was manufactured sometime between July 2008 and the date I bought it. No kidding! I thought that was funny. The only thing he could tell me was that it was sent to B&H (but couldn't tell me when) and they have no record of it being serviced by Nikon.

I forgot to ask about the camera having zero actuations and if, when it leaves Nikon, it is normal to have x number of actuations after testing. But in my searching around on various forums, I have read about others getting new cameras with zero actuations. So I don't think it's unusual.

I'll probably call B&H at some point to see if I can get an explanation from them. I don't expect much though.

In the mean time I have been enjoying it very much. Overall it's a great camera.

If I find out anything else, I'll post it. Thanks everyone for your replies.

Jim

This is what Nikon says about shutter count

There is no way to accurately tell the total number of times your camera shutter has released. While there are third party software applications designed to read a cameras shutter count, this number is not always accurate because the shutter release times may be reset by firmware updates, or reset in the Service department if certain parts are replaced or other operations are performed.

So if your shutter count was truly just 1 then I'd be even more suspicious that it had been reset and then returned and/or resold. I guess you should ask Nikon about it. Though I'm not sure what you could do about.

Let us know what they tell you.

nfiorito said:
I can see myself being a bit annoyed were I in your shoes, so I understand. That being said, it'd be more of a mental thing than a problem with the camera (no offense, of course).

No offense taken - I'm the first to admit that I'm "mental".

Thanks Niko for your response. I didn't realize this until recently (after more than 2000 shots on the camera) and I couldn't quite remember what the original firmware version was. I remember when I first got it that the image was DSC_0001.jpg and thinking that indicated zero actuations. Now I know that's not necessarily true. So I loaded PhotoME and opened up the first picture I took and saw that shutter count was "1" (this was before I upgraded the firmware). I think that's the value I should be looking at. Now, I don't know if your point about loading the firmware resets the shutter count can be true. I know that when I flashed the 1.02 firmware, the Shutter Count did not reset. However, I think the image number did get reset back to zero. This seems to make sense, else everyone could try to resell their cameras as new after loading the latest firmware.

But you raise a good point in that if Nikon tests the camera, it should be > 1. Hmmm, Curiouser and Curiouser. I'm thinking they must have a way to reset the Shutter
Count before it goes out the door, and only Nikon can do it.

And I did buy the camera new. Actually, I took advantage of one of the bundles (w/24-70). It came in new packaging, serial numbers matched everywhere (camera and box), and all the paperwork/cards were included. At the time I unpacked it, I had no reason to believe it wasn't new. If it's just been sitting in a warehouse somewhere and is "old", well, I guess it's no big deal, if in fact that's all it is. It's more a curiosity than anything else in that case. But the fact that this is likely a 2008 camera just seems very strange.

Now, having said all this, I do currently have a question into Nikon regarding an issue with the viewfinder that I recently noticed. I'm waiting to hear back from them on this. So one thought was someone else noticed the same problem and returned it to B&H, and they just sold it to someone else (me), and somehow they reset the shutter count before sending it out again. It doesn't appear to be the case but the thought did cross my mind.

NSX I'm changing your membership title to "naive little one" :^)

The deal is that he might have been sold a used/returned/refurbished camera as new. Jim did you buy this D700 as a new item? I mean you didn't buy it as refurbished or as an open box item? Seems very strange that a new camera would have such an old firmware.

The shutter count of cameras can be reset by reinstalling the firmware so the fact that it had a "zero" count means nothing. Actually even a new camera shouldn't have a "zero" count as the shutter is tested at the factory. So I'm thinking you mean when you started taking pictures your picture folder started at lets say DSC_0001.jpg etc, right? If so then that is not your shutter count but just a count of how many photos are or have been in your camera's "folder". You get the shutter count from software like Opanda.

BH does have a huge warehouse and your camera might have been sitting there for a year. However the D700 was originally sold with firmware version 1.00 back in summer of 2008 so your "new" D700 "might" be almost two years old. I seriously doubt that bh would have a camera sitting around for almost 2 years because they keep very close watch on their stock.

Someone "could" have used up the camera and then reset it back to the original firmware to get the shutter count back to zero and then returned the camera to the store. The problem with that theory though is firmware 1.00 isn't readily available as a download. So if someone wanted to reset the camera they would have more likely downloaded 1.01 and reinstall that instead. Did your camera have all of the warranty cards etc and did the s/n match the box?

poster said:
Well my initial reason was to annoy Niko with PMs lol. Anyway,

Poster, you annoy me with just your presence on the forum :^P
So don't be surprised if I "accidentally" lock you out of your account ;^)

I can see myself being a bit annoyed were I in your shoes, so I understand. That being said, it'd be more of a mental thing than a problem with the camera (no offense, of course).

Does it matter if the camera is old? I would understand that if the box had been opened and you camera is used, but if it's just an old D700 that's been sitting in their warehouse, what's the big deal?

Oh, it's not the firmware that bothers me. I updated that to 1.02 the day I got it. No problem with that.
It's that I just realized I got a camera that was most likely manufactured in 2008 when I bought it in 2010. It just seems a little fishy to me, to be honest. I would have posed the question to B&H when I first got it, had I realized it (actually I may still call them just to see what they say).
It seems Nikon IS dumping there old stock of D700s, literally!

It might be just old stock. How come you can't just update manually?

poster - the big brother is watching You, don't play with mods :)

Well my initial reason was to annoy Niko with PMs lol. Anyway,

JimF yeah it probably was from the older batch. Don't worry.

i'm pretty sure PM's are broken still, is there a reason it can't be posted here?

yes I am very afraid to break the news to you but your camera is older than you think. For more details PM Niko Doby he's the resident know it all.

Hi all,
I admit this probably shouldn't be bugging me but it is a little. I purchased a D700 from B&H in March this year and it had the original 1.00 firmware loaded and the serial number is 2109xxx (current serial #s are 23xxxxx I think). Wasn't the 1.01 firmware released in January of '09? Which would mean my camera was manu'ed before that. How the heck could that be!? Could it be that it was sitting in a warehouse somewhere for an entire year? As far as I can tell, the camera was brand new (zero actuations). Anyone have a clue.

Thanks.