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I like the idea of eidetic memory perhaps being possible in children, but disappearing by adulthood.  I can't see why such a skill would be necessary.  You might not even be really aware that you have it.  It seems like an ability that is more of a strange quirk of the nervous system.  For some reason, an image hangs around longer than it should.  Because we never make any use of it, the ability to retain that image for even just those few seconds eventually disappears during the normal pruning process of the brain.  But the idea of photographic memory is just something that we all think would be really great.  We wouldn't have to study, we could look at a map once and never need directions, etc.  But truly photographic memory wouldn't really be advantageous, just annoying.  There's no point in storing that much information, even for a short period of time.  I think evolution has enabled humans to learn how to extract the information they most need to remember, and leave it at that.