Wow - I read Richard Pilbrow's book when I was doing the stage lighting at school in the early 70's. Amazed that it is still being shown as an important read.
40:00 - So it's actually not that the camera can't "mesh" the two color temperatures, it's that it is much more sensitive to the gradient than the human eye. The human eye can't "mesh" the two color temperatures either, not really. It's just not as exaggerated.
I disagree with him on the definition of white light: it's not an ambiguous, trivial thing. White light is best defined as light that contains the full spectrum of light visible to the average human eye. That's it. What's the color temperature of that? About 4800K. However, that's not a very smart question to ask and that is because the concept of color temperature is about how far away a light source is from white light, and whether it is biased towards orange or towards blue. Another way of thinking about it is in terms of Color Rendering Index (CRI). A light source with a CRI of 100 is perfect white light and will allow all pigments to appear exactly how they should. Using a light source with a CRI less than 100 will limit the amount of color available to pigments on costumes, actors, skin, sets, paints, etc.
