Race cars and princesses revisited

This may have been my most fun assignment yet.  Our local race track hosted a regional training session for race track workers and volunteers.  I got to play with the jaws of life and I got to go for a ride in a race car.
Everyone was in a good mood and enjoyed having their pictures taken.

My photos from Frozen were printed this week too, but my favorite photo was not selected for the paper.

I had a technical issue that could have ruined my race track photos.  I always shoot in RAW / .NEF, so I thought that when I set my camera to "Active D lighting" at the highest level it would have no effect on my RAW files.  I set it on high so I could see what effect it had on my .jpg files.  No other settings have effects on RAW files as the RAW file is just what the camera sees with no editing.

Well I learned the hard way that active D lighting does effect RAW files.  It changes the exposure level before the shutter opens.  My files all came out slightly under exposed.  I was able to bring the exposure up to the proper level in Adobe camera raw but at the cost of adding a small amount unwanted  noise to my photos.  The photos were still better than newspaper sharp, due to my ISO being set at only 200, but they were not quite up to my standard.  I have now turned off active D lighting and I will leave it off.    Lesson learned the hard way.