If, on the other hand, you got a D7000 for Christmas and feel that all the Internet posts can't be wrong, let me help you with some Japanese New Year's traditions to keep your camera healthy and productive for the coming year:
- Just prior to the new year, pratice osoji. Clean your camera, inside and out. Get the sensor clean, and make sure there is no dust clinging to the outside.
- Get some straw and make a rope out of it. Hang this rope in front of the lens to help ward off evil focus spirits and hot pixels.
- Set the camera to Beep (High) for joyano-kane. At exactly midnight, fire the shutter 108 times to free the camera from any sins of manufacturing made during 2010.
- Don't photograph the same thing twice in the first two weeks of the year. In Japanese tradition, you need to practice a series of "firsts," or hatsu. So take your first multiple exposure. Your first intervals. Your first low light image. Your first UniWB image. Use lenses only once during this period, making sure to exchange the lens between each frame. Use any focal length only once (ditto apertures and shutter speeds). And don't forget to photograph the first sunrise of the year, as this lets in the most favored light and will condition your sensor in ways Nikon repair can't.
- Post a (positive) haiku about your camera on an Internet forum. Bonus points for a haiku that celebrates one of your camera's firsts.
When you complete this sequence after two weeks, you can now retest your camera. You will find that it will not overexpose, you will not see hot pixels in your images, and the focus will be neither back nor front, but just right. I'm not sure why Nikon doesn't put this stuff in the manual.