They're even older than a good chunk of my glass. A pair of Manfrotto legs. One with a 3047 head, one with... I'd have to look it up, its another pan tilt head. Then there's also a carbon fiber with a rather light ball head (that's the one I take when I have to walk a distance). Everything is hex plate. I'd consider the arca-swiss heads, but when I was getting a good tripod I couldn't find a pan tilt head that I liked that was reasonable in the set of heads. The Arca-Swiss C1 didn't come out until later... and... well... yea.
While the $50 tripod is ok... the tripod often has issues like its only waist height without extending the (cracked) center column which increases its instability. They often don't have good QR systems and that leads to people not using it.
A reasonable tripod head is about $150. An acceptable aluminum tripod can be found for another $100... and those are worlds better than the $50 tripod. It wasn't something I learned until I broke my 3rd plastic tripod (or couldn't find more QR plates) in two years. I still have the 3001 & 3047 tripod that I got after that in... '00? or '01?
Again, this is a "invest in something good and it will last a lifetime" rather than "get the cheap equipment that will fail in a year or you will become dissatisfied with."
They're even older than a good chunk of my glass. A pair of Manfrotto legs. One with a 3047 head, one with... I'd have to look it up, its another pan tilt head. Then there's also a carbon fiber with a rather light ball head (that's the one I take when I have to walk a distance). Everything is hex plate. I'd consider the arca-swiss heads, but when I was getting a good tripod I couldn't find a pan tilt head that I liked that was reasonable in the set of heads. The Arca-Swiss C1 didn't come out until later... and... well... yea.
While the $50 tripod is ok... the tripod often has issues like its only waist height without extending the (cracked) center column which increases its instability. They often don't have good QR systems and that leads to people not using it.
A reasonable tripod head is about $150. An acceptable aluminum tripod can be found for another $100... and those are worlds better than the $50 tripod. It wasn't something I learned until I broke my 3rd plastic tripod (or couldn't find more QR plates) in two years. I still have the 3001 & 3047 tripod that I got after that in... '00? or '01?
Again, this is a "invest in something good and it will last a lifetime" rather than "get the cheap equipment that will fail in a year or you will become dissatisfied with."