Top myths in photography

wideangle lenses cause subject distortion

You could use a long lens on a panorama bracket, take a mosaic of shots covering a wide picture angle, stitch them together, apply the same (rectilinear) projection - presentation of the scene - that the wideangle lens provided, and the resulting image will be identical in perspective terms; so, nothing to do with the specific lens used.

This wide picture angle, when viewed in such a way that it fills your visual field (just as the wideangle lens saw it) will look natural with no apparent distortion. If viewed so that it fills less than the original viewing angle, it will look unnatural, but that is a viewing effect only. Similarly, viewing an image taken with a long lens that captures only a small viewing angle, in such a way that it fills a larger part of your visual field, will look unnatural ("telephoto effect") for the same reason. the same effects happen with drawings and paintings; it is optical geometry and has nothing to do with the equipment.

using different zoom changes the perspective

"Perspective" (of the sort usually discussed) can IMO be described, as the apparent configuration that is seen from a particular point in space, as projected onto a virtual plane when looking in a particular direction. So: what overlaps what, how big object A appears in relation to object B, and so on, geometrically. This configuration does not change - the parts of the scene do not all shift around, light does not stop travelling in straight lines - just becasue you have changed how much of this overall configuration happens to be presented in your viewfinder.

Another usage of the word "perspective" is covered in the first rant point above.

rules exist for pictorial composition

conventional rules-of-thumb do exist for analysing and classifying pictures after the fact, but IMO these cannot, in practice, be much help prescriptively when the time comes; except in having educated your eye somewhat. Like improvisational jazz: it has to work (at least partly) by spur-of-the-moment feel, and despite - not through - formula.

the "hyperfocal" focusing point is 1/3rd distance into the depth-of-field

this proportion varies quite a bit in practice

always mount the camera onto a tripod for panoramas

I sometimes see people following this advice by swivelling (often, a quite large) lens around the tripod mount as a centre, This guarantees a big parallax movement, far greater than even quite sloppy hand-held technique for doing the same thing. Now that is OK for cases where the subject is entirely very distant and the technique is basically used for increasing resolution that could have been taken instead with a single wider lens shot. But it is often problematic otherwise - in particular for wide angles of coverage that bring close items into view, such as the foreground. Tripod may be preferable or necessary for other reasons; but IMO after a special pano rig, hand-holding comes in many cases a close second, with standard tripod in distant third place.

(and, a tad more subjectively:)

the starting point for Raw processing, is how the camera JPG looks

This is often hard to achieve, and this effort is IMO purposeless anyway where the intent with the camera, has been to achieve the best Raw file only. The camera JPG is the result of just one highly specific, common-denominator, speed optimised kind of processing. This imposes completely unnecessary, complicating restriction on what you might otherwise want to do given a free hand, and the unfettered talents of the converter program you have chosen.

"HDR effect" looks cool

I sometimes wonder what people are actually seeing; a grimy and nightmarish kind of drama, sure, but completely derivative in nature, and apparently applied regardless of the miraculous kinds of real lighting and authentic visual drama that we see in nature. For me personally - yuck. Told you it was subjective...

a photo all in monochrome except for the bunch of flowers / whatever, does not justify murdering the person responsible (grin)

Yes, this one needs no explanation - sigh.

RP