jharter Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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For the money, I would just buy one and see.
FYI, I have gone through the same process you are talking about. The bogey tripods are, IMO, terrible for coastal photography. The leg lock springs corrode rapidly with salt water and are not easily cleaned. Aluminum is much less forgiving to vibration from waves than carbon fiber. I bought a Bogen 3021 thinking that it would save my nice CF tripods but I was wrong. The Bogen was so much heavier that I did not want to carry it. The aluminum is cold to the hands on brisk days. The awful feet get clogged with sand in the screw threads and don't clean easily. It is too long to pack well in my luggage. Etc.
Then I took my Feisol carbon fiber on a coastal trip. It was excellent but one day I accidentally dumped it in the waves. I found out that its leg locks are a pain to disassemble and clean in the field (so I didn't). I managed to limp to the finish on that trip with a gimpy tripod that would not lock tightly.
In the end, I ponied up for a RRS TQC-14 which I have found (so far) to be the sturdiest, best built, most easily cleaned and maintained in the field, carry-on packable carbon fiber tripod. It is almost laughably expensive but had I bought it in the first place I would be ahead.
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