Wedding Photos taken outoodrs with 50mm fixed set on F1.8 - !overexposed!

[woodcycl]

Hello. This is my first post and hopefully only one of many to come. I'm new to dSLRs but not new to being a photo bug in general. I have had a Nikon D80 now for about 6 months and took a basic dSLR class locally a few months ago. I have both the Nikon 18-200mm VR DX and 50mm fixed 1.8 lens.

Here is my problem -- my camera was used (in Manual mode) to take some of my wedding photos outdoors on a sunny day using my 50mm set to 1.8. As you can imagine, they are nearly all WHITE with very little detail. I have Photoshop CS and several highly rated PS Digital Photo books, but none of the techniques mentioned was able to help me in my endeavor to recover my photos.

These photos were not taken in RAW format (unfortunately I can only assume now) as they were taken in JPG.

Am I correct in thinking that if detail isn't in the digital photo (my current WHITE situation) that no amount of adjustments I make will add detail. Similar to the inability to remove noise or bring into-focus a blurry photo?

Any insight is appreciated.

Brian

[amp'd]

I have a D80. Good camera *wink*. And in my own experience (had it for about 18 mos)- in jpg if I blew the highlights out of the water (so to speak) or overexposed images badly- they were utterly hopeless. No matter what I tried. Especially at f/1.8. =0( Sorry.

[pathfinder]

White appearing jpgs with no detail, have no information to work with. I think you are out of luck.

If there is any detail, a multiply blend with several layers will help the density, but will not create what is not in the image to start with.

[arodney]

These photos were not taken in RAW format (unfortunately I can only assume now) as they were taken in JPG.

Correct. With Raw, its a good possibility that "over exposed" 1.5 stops would result in proper rendering:
http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/camera-technique/exposing-for-raw.html

With JPEG, if its gone, its gone.