If you spend enough time with enough photographers you will find it impossible to get away from the question of gear. I'm not a gear-head but I've been asked my fair share of, “what do you shoot with” or even worse, “what were your camera settings?”
To me these types of questions are irrelevant. I shoot the subject with the equipment I had on hand and with the settings I that believed were best at the time. If I need to reproduce the shot later I will definitely write down all the settings and even measure the height of things, but this is for consistency and speed.
When I started shooting studio products I had one 20 year old White Lightning, a Canon flash and a Vivatar 285. A while back when I bought my Einstein lights I was very excited. They have saved me a lot of time and effort getting the light the way I want it to look. But even though the Einstein's are a huge upgrade they have their limitations. As a photographer, no matter what equipment I use, I have to be adaptable and work with any and all limitations.
This week I decided to see if I could light something using my iPad and 2 iPhones. These “lights” had limitations for sure. The older iPhone was dimmer and bluer than my newer one and I didn't have stands to hold two of them but I made due. The depth of field was extremely shallow and I could have done a focus stack but considering the lighthearted nature of this project I decided not to. I used wax paper on the right side for diffusion.