My stance: There is no 'accurate' colour [reproduction]. At least not in any meaningful way.
In theory you can measure colours in the scene and adjust the photo file until the values are as close a fit as possible - for monitor as well as printing. That is what physicists do all the time. But that's not how we perceive colours. It's even less how we use colour [or any other characteristic of an image]. We go for effect*.
A few weeks ago I first noticed An der Alster 1, mainly for its form, it looks like a space ship crossed from Moebius' designs with Douglas Adams and an Apple computer. Without researching it further I assume the architects wanted what I called the porthole look simply because many architects designing for Hamburg are desperately trying to fit some seafaring reference into their buildings.
Back then I saw two people in one of those panorama windows on the side, making for quite an interesting picture. Obviously I wanted to revisit that. Driving by one night I saw this slightly outlandish look with the fluorescent light on. Exactly what I wanted! Last week I went with my tripod to explore the building; one result is the photo on top.
The second rendition, with the green house, is what we actually see when standing in front of the house at night. The camera's Auto White Balance of my D200, correctly, corrected towards white, coming up with the first rendition. As Stuart showed, the light is actually white, not magenta tinged.
Interestingly this does not answer the question what 'accurate colour' is. Physically correct is the greenish rendition since the light used is in the green frequencies. Thus the camera is right to correct for this so the white walls look white - which is what we would see touring the offices. If 'accurate colour' means 'that what we perceive' - a viable definition - the green rendition is correct
since that is what you see at night from the outside.
Our brain adapts to different lighting situations by comparing what it sees to what it has seen, coming up with corrections. We all know that. Sometimes the system fails [to good effect] because comparisons are missing or the "wrong" colour is overwhelming:
Everyone has probably seen the motive once or twice, most likely with the orange rendition. Like the camera - and the same as with the building - our brain sees the orange version when on the scene! Two exceptions: the lamps themselves and the tarmac. Our brain has models for them, "knowing" that light is white and tarmac some kind of grey.
The second rendition is very close to the correct colours but has major problems with the off-white tiles on the walls, getting a bit too much blue. BTW, I used a WhiBal for the correction. The tarmac, the pavement, the green tiles and the yellow tiles on the ceiling are fine. I had to boost the colour - thus the surplus blue in the off-whites - because otherwise the whole thing would have looked very slightly tinted b/w.
In contrast to the building shot this one does not exhibit mixed lighting. Still, when we are on the scene we do not see the correct colours but the orange one. And again we have no meaningful way to talk about accurate colour.
My personal preference, BTW, lies with the green house because it looks more interesting [and coincidentally is what we see in reality]. In the case of the tunnel I side with the corrected version simply because the other rendition has been used too often.**
Admittedly the genre I used is not the one usually called up in these discussions, disputants talk about portraits. I think I do not need to come up with examples as everyone here should be aware that subjects do decidedly not want accurate colour. The only genre where right colours are important - up to a point - is product photography. Mainly because the customer wants his goods to look in the pic as in reality. That is where proofing comes from.
*A linguistic explanation is in order: 'Effect' as I use it here means the emotion elicited by the viewer [or listener]. In the vernacular 'effect' often means the technique as applied to a photo etc. The latter is probably better called 'special effect'.
**There's some other photos I did which gain from the orange look.
