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Explanation: The phrase is perhaps slightly deceptive, because the phrase “cast of light” can be used without reference to a specific colour, in the sense of “the way light falls on things”, e.g. “an eerie cast of light”:
However, the word “cast” clearly means a tinge or hue when it is linked with a colour-word, as in the following examples:
Eliminate the blue cast in shadows or from daylight - Friends of HDV
3 Sep 2008 ... A simple color correction tutorial to remove incorrect blue tint which may sometimes appear in your video. http://www.friendsofhdv.com/.../remove-blue-color-daylight-s...
* Daylight film - (Photography): Definition
The added bonus is that the inbuilt blue cast gives the sky an added boost of blue, ... carried a blue coating to match their balance to daylight film. ... http://en.mimi.hu/photography/daylight_film.html
I certainly understood “cast” in the latter sense here, because it is linked with the word “blue”.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2009-11-26 13:37:05 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
I think of a "blue cast" as being a hint of blue - perhaps doing no more than subtly accentuating the blues that are already there - but obviously someone experienced it rather differently here:
These bulbs are billed as producing "daylight" equivalent light, and that might (technically) be true, but the intense (really!) blue cast of the light was really unbearable to my entire family. www.amazon.com/Feit-Electric-ESL13T-Fluorescent-Incandescen...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2009-11-26 13:39:33 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
A subtle "blue cast", as often understood in the context of photography, is certainly not strong enough to make everything look blue; it may simply make the overall colour look colder (as I think one or two of the above links indicate).
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 21 hrs (2009-11-27 08:46:46 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Yes, you could say "light with a blue cast" ...or "bluish cast".
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 21 hrs (2009-11-27 09:02:37 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
"recreating one of nature’s most challenging light sources" - the sun, I assumed. Correct me if I'm wrong. Not the moon, is it?
Daylight is said to have a blue cast: at least, I know that some daylight simulation bulbs are blue-tinted.
Taking the sentence as a whole, I understand the "cast" (hue, tinge) to be the all-important thing here. With the word "blue" right next to it, it's difficult to take "cast" in any other sense - though it has to be said, there is something ambiguous about the phrase "cast of light".
On your question whether "of" should be there at all:
Another possibility is that it should be "soft pale blue-cast light", i.e. a soft pale light with a blue cast.
... imitating sunlight ...
It's the sort of context where I've seen "cast" used in the sense of "hue".
Compare, for example, "sallow cast to his skin".
"hue", and somehow the verb "creates" seems to reinforce this. The trouble is, there are three adjectives competing for our attention: soft pale blue. Which one of these adjectives is most closely bound with "cast"?
Phrases such as "soft cast of light", "strong cast of light", "bright cast of light" are not unknown.
Ambiguity! - but I've read the sentence quite a few times, and somehow the "hue" meaning seems more appropriate (I understood this, rightly or wrongly, as being about imititating sunlight - natural light of some kind, anyway).
My problem is that I didn't know cast=hue, so I was reading the phrase as "blue...cast of light" as opposed to "blue cast... of light". This is my new word for the day:)
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Answers
11 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): -1
to throw light
Explanation: XXX creates and throws a soft pale blue light...
Yasutomo Kanazawa Local time: 03:57 Specializes in field Native speaker of: Japanese PRO pts in category: 4
41 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +3
light
Explanation: XXX creates a soft pale blue (cast of) light and is the perfect tool for recreating one of nature’s most challenging light sources.
The filter changes the color of the light so that it appears blue --
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 50 mins (2009-11-26 12:17:11 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Andrea -- the sentence I wrote after the example -- about the filter creating that color, is the explanation of what it means.
Hope this is helpful --
Laurie Price Spain Specializes in field Native speaker of: English
Notes to answerer
Asker: Well, indeed... for now I have done away with "cast of", but what does it mean?
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): -1
