Looking at the Manfrotto. How does this stand up to others?
I'll try to help I'm a pro photographer and have bought loads of tripods over time and made lots of mistakes. Ask yourself are you going to be hiking over mountains for a week or will it be a case of walking around the local park. Are you going to do a lot of macro work requiring exposures of 2 seconds or night photography at the edge of the beach in salt water with exposures of 30 seconds or more. Do you want it because its light and compact.
I'll be honest Carbon fibre is not the be all and end all you need to spend quite a lot of money to get a really good carbon fibre tripod. £250 will only get you an ok tripod, give the leg a bit of a kick and you'll see that the camera wobbles and its not hard to imagine the wind over a 10 second exposure being enough to really effect sharpness. £500-£700 is closer to the mark to really get things stable. I've now just got a Manfrotto 057 at £600 its not cheap yet its the first carbon fibre tripod I've ever really felt happy with and as a result I use it a lot.
My recommendation is that you look at the unilock series of tripods for the money around £130-£200 they really are very stable and allow you to angle the camera at almost any angle.
If you really want to go carbon fibre and £600 is too much then the Manfrotto 190 cxpro range and the 055 are pretty good. Manfrotto quick release clip lock legs are great as they give you the adjuster spanner and clip it to the leg the Gitzo twist lock legs can start to slide down without warning and I've always found they are far less stable.
A complete alternative is these Joby Grillapods they are pretty good i think its the focus model I have which was about £100 without a head I use mine all the time, its very small light you can wrap it around a tree, railing or lampost.
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