The Henderson-Hasselbalch equation is used mostly to calculate pH of solutions created mixing known amounts of acids and conjugate bases (or neutralizing part of acid with a strong base). For example, what is the pH of a solution prepared mixing reagents so that it contains 0.1 M of acetic acid and 0.05 M NaOH? Half of the acid is neutralized, so concentrations of acid and conjugate base are identical, thus the quotient under logarithm is 1, the logarithm is 0 and pH=pKa.
This approach - while perfectly justifiable in many cases - is dangerous, as it creates false conviction that the equation can be used this way always. That's not true.
The Henderson-Hasselbalch equation is valid when it contains equilibrium concentrations of an acid and a conjugate base. In the case of solutions containing not-so-weak acids (or not-so-weak bases) equilibrium concentrations can be far from those predicted by the neutralization stoichiometry.
Let's replace the acetic acid from our example with something stronger - e.g. dichloroacetic acid, with pKa=1.5. Repeating the same resoning we used earlier we will arrive at pH=1.5 - which is wrong. The proper pH value can be calculated from the equation 11.13 or using the pH calculator - and it is 1.78. The reason is simple. The dichloroacetic acid is strong enough to dissociate on its own and equilibrium concentrations of the acid and conjugate base are not 0.05 M (as we expected from the neutralization reaction stoichiometry) but 0.0334 M and 0.0666 M respectively.
As a rule of thumb you may remember that acids with pKa below 2.5 dissociate too easily and use of the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation for pH prediction can give wrong results, especially in the case of diluted solutions. For solutions above 10 mM and acids weaker than pKa>=2.5, the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation gives results with acceptable error. The same holds for bases with pKb>=2.5. However, the same equation will work perfectly regardless of the pKa value if you are asked to calculate a ratio of the acid to conjugate base in the solution with a known pH.