jim quist wrote:
When carrying a tripod to the location I prefer the lightest possible, such as a carbon fiber. When using it I prefer as heavy as possible, like the Bogen monster I had in film days. Good luck to you.
My experience with my Bogen 3051+3047 - 3-Way pan/tilt head (all aluminum, two leg sections, collapsed to 37.25" without the head, weighed 12.65 lbs for the legs, and 3 lbs for the head), was that it was not nearly as stable as my 4.1lb Feisol CT3472, which collapses to 20.5" and with an Arca Swiss ball head which weighs 1.4 lbs.
Let's put it in real terms - It was a challenge to use the Bogen with anything longer than 200mm, which one would expect for a tripod that was not built for fieldwork. It belonged in the studio, preferably on a set of casters. In contrast, I've used the Feisol, with a 600mm lens + a 1.4TC, on a D300 - a combined effective focal length of 1260mm when crop factor is considered, and not had an issue, even at 1/10 sec.
The take aways here are that weight ≠stability, aluminum ≠stability, 2 leg sections ≠stability, and load capacity has absolutely nothing to do with stability. On the other side of the coin - carbon fiber = stability, thick legs = stability, large apex = stability, and 4 leg sections with twist locks are as stable as 3 leg sections, and will allow a small folded length, that can fit in a backpack, if the backpack can accommodate something 20.5" long.
FWIW, the load capacity of the Bogen legs was 26 lbs, the head was 16 lbs. By comparison, the much lighter Feisol legs has a load capacity of 66 lbs, and the Arca-Swiss Z1 ball head has a load capacity of 130 lbs. The 5.5 lb carbon (with ball head) has 6x the stability of the 15.65 lb Bogen with pan/tilt head.
.