"Camera Rot." rotates the camera around the target so to go behind then set the real part to 180 - the camera normally always points directly at the target but you can use "Camera Dir." to change that.
"Camera Distance" sets the distance of the camera from the target but can also be used in combination with "Dolly Scale" - the reason for this is that I wanted to be able to dolly the camera towards/away from the target in an animation but using UF's in-built exponential interpolation option is not that straightforward so to make it possible to exponentially zoom I made the Dolly scale parameter such that you can scale the distance from the target using the Dolly scale and UF's animation exponential interpolation will work on the dolly scale parameter, I found that there were issues as the values get small so I set the minimum to 3 and the scale gives a distance of "Dolly scale*Camera distance/3" so if you set a target on the surface of the Mandelbulb with say a camera distance of 1e-5 you can use the Dolly scale to go from say 300,000 down to 3 in an animation using exponential interpolation.
Another way of controlling the camera is directly using the target - set the camera distance to say 1e-6 and then the target coords are essentially the coords of the centre of the camera lens --- of course that holds until you start deep zooming when you'd have to reduce the camera distance still further, I wouldn't recommend going less than around 1e-16 though.
I found it more convenient when it was possible to set the Dolly at 1.
Regarding image plane distance, etc... I do not have the same "philosophy" as Dave's. But he is the programmer, and I was just a beta tester
In most of my animation, I try not to use the Location tab except for final adjustments: that was Dave's initial advice that enabled me to add some perspective. I set the image plane distance to a value between 1.2 and 2.
1.2 gives almost a distorded perspective, and 2 is almost like a parallel projection. I generally use 1.4
Then I use the Target coord annd camera dist to zoom.
This is difficult, because the effect of a variation of these parameters is not the same depending on camera position and rotation.
For example if camera position and rotation is close to the origin, the camera distance is enough to zoom in straight line. But if not, then you'll have to adjust Target XYZ coord as well otherwise your zoom will go another way (not to the center of the screen)
I think that the next major improvement in terms of useability is a completely revamped navigation system!