The Photographer’s Version of Perfect Pitch

Can some people set exposure perfectly by eye?

Society assumes that we all perceive the world the same way — that we all see rubies as red, taste chilis as hot, and hear lullabies as soothing. Without shared perceptions, the world would be chaotic.

Yet our perceptions are shared only up to a point. Some of us are much more sensitive to some senses than the population at large.

A sommelier can identify the vineyard and year that produced a wine more accurately than most of us can tell a red from a white without looking at the glass. And a small fraction of the population can identify the musical notes they hear as confidently as the rest of us can identify the color blue.

For a select few, in other words, sense data gets interpreted as absolute values, not the touchy-feely relativism the rest of us settle for.

So I started thinking about relatives and absolutes in photography. Could some photographers set exposures perfectly by eye, never consulting a light meter? Could they have the photographer’s version of perfect pitch?

Well, the answer is no, but the explanation behind that answer is, shall we say, illuminating.

There’s no way to measure it exactly, but estimates are that about 1 person in 10,000 has perfect pitch, or more accurately, absolute pitch. That’s the ability to correctly identify notes when heard, or sing them correctly, without hearing a…