Raid have fun.
I am sure you will do well with this superb camera. It IS a classic because it just does what it does without fuss or fanfare and does it well. If you are inexperienced in DSLRs, some patience may be required in the beginning. Not that the process is all that different or difficult but as always new cameras have differences that can be frustrating.
Menus for example - though Nikon's is mostly fairly logical the D700 is essentially a pro camera and does have heaps of options to allow you to particularize the camera to your preferences and requirements. This can be confusing if you delve into these too much - I never have. BTW you can select favorite menu options and save them as a personal menu so that your most commonly used menu options can always be found quickly.
My advice on beginning to shoot using MF legacy lenses includes the following:
(1) Set the lens focal length and maximum aperture into the camera using the relevant menu option. This provides useful metadata in you images thought it is not necessary otherwise.
(2) Always shoot raw or raw and jpg (fine) to get the most out of the images you shoot. Nikon NEF files are "deep" and have much more extractable data than jpgs.
(3) When shooting in contrasty conditions I find it beneficial to set my exposure to 1/3 stop under what is recommended by the meter (with any camera) to reduce blown highlights though shooting raw/NEF will mean you can pull a lot of any blown image back
(4) Whether using MF or shooting with an AF lens I always set the camera to Aperture priority (or occasionally program mode), using centre weighted average metering and single shot. That simplifies things a whole lot by approximating film cameras which I grew up with. I will often also set the ISO to auto with a range of 200 to 1600 ISO letting the camera decide which ISO to use within this range in any shot. It is convenient and the image noise is so low anywhere in this range that it does not create those problems in the image (maybe just a touch of noise reduction is needed in post on any images shot using 1600.
(5) Use good MF technique - use the focus ring to roll slightly past the point of max focus then roll back again slightly to the max focus point and look at the green dot in the finder to confirm that the camera also thinks you have hit max focus. I find this quick and works.
(6) One useful option which you may want to use later are "shooting banks". These allow you to have several sets of customized settings for different shooting needs which you can quickly access. (e.g shooting bank (a) can be set up for every day shooting in color, shooting bank (b) can be set up for shooting in monochrome, shooting bank (c) can be set up for shooting at higher ISOs. etc
Happy hunting.
