My girlfriend has the Vanguard Espod Plus 234AP I think and she uses it for her 40D+85 1.8. I think it's very steady and holds her camera and lens without any problems. The legs feel solid as does the head. One thing that was a big deal for her was that the tripod included 2 main colums. A longer one for extended height and 1 which is about as high as the ring where the three legs are attached to so you can basically put the tripod very very low to the ground and you don't have to invert your camera(hang it underneath) to get low perspective. Good for photographing mushrooms/flowers and stuff. As I said, it was a reasonably priced tripod(around 120€ I think), but it felt good.
I could take some photos of it if you're interested. So you can see how it works.
I personally use a "free"(got it with a magazine) aluminum tripod which I love. It has some play in the ballhead and I don't think it is designed for my gear, but it works perfectly for meI can live with the little hiccups that it has, but then I don't use my tripod all the time.
Good luck!
Btw: I have a ball head which is nice for a lot of reasons. I must admit though that having a pan/tilt head? would have some advantages as well. Panorama's would probably be easier with a pan/tilt head as well as vertical shots. That's one of the things that annoys me the most about my cheap tripod. But it might also be the fact that I have the most simple ball head there is
Reply With Quote