Am I right in thinking that most cameras embed the shot information in the digital file somewhere? And if so can anybody tell me how to go about viewing that information for shots for which I haven't recorded that information?

Incidentally I'm using a Nikon D200 if that is relevant.

Chris Ive a D200 to

go into menu and select display mode

press right hand arrow

then tick all the boxes

then go down one more and click ok

then come out of menu and find the image you want to know about

then press down arrow button ...press it again for next lot of info

theres a few pages you can view

Download the free software Opanda IExif, it'll show all the information recorded in the EXIF file, including your shutter activation count.    Might only handle JPEGs, and even then, only those that haven't had the EXIF info stripped (e.g. by using something like the Photoshop 'save for web' command).

Hope that helps.