For taking panorama shots, is a proper pano-head justified more for any definite fore-ground or perhaps fore-midground object(s) and go on to depend on the object size and distance? And I should probably ask if there's a rough, or not so, guide to what the distance is wrt lens used
This is not so simple. The best is if you understand whan exactly is happening, i.e. how parallax error occurs.
1. The same close objects have to appear in multiple frames in order to cause problem.
Example:
Pano with close objectsThe tree at the left edge and the one at the right edge were within a few meters away. Prime suspect for parallax error? No, because these are in a single frame (I had to reshoot the serie, because I misjudged it in the first try, and the tree at the right edge appeared in two frames).
Anhother example:
Pano with close objects I paid attention to shoot one frame with each of the shrubs in the center of the frame, so that they do not appearin multiple frames. However, the curb had to be photoshopped.
2. The ground close to the shooting position may be a source of major PITA or it may pose no problem at all. Typically, grass, gravel, shrubs, snow, etc. pose no problem. (Water may be difficult.)
Example:
12-frames panoThe gound at both sides stretches over several frames. However, this was a very forgiving terrain, horrendeous unmatching overlappings vanished.
Note, that the control points
have to be selected manually, none in the ground, or removed if automatically selected, otherwise the mid and top segments are paying the price.
Bad example: the attached crop of pavement. This is the nightmare, very difficult to correct in Photoshop; I cropped away some part of it:
Lake Louise Fairmont ChateauOn the other hand,
this cobblestone did not cause any problem (small and irregularly laid).
All the above examples were shot hand-held.