I found one thing, when i bought my Gitzo 5 series and 3 series i never look back at any tripod at all and i never worry about the weight, i have Manfrotto 190XProB and it will never cut weight of most of heavy equipment, so i went with Gitzo first with 1 series then upgraded to 2,3,5 series and i couldn't be happy, i know that i spend thousands on them but those thousands are spent once and saved me for years and years of replacing and upgrading, i bought 1 series first for travel and it worked great but i found that it couldn't handle much heavy gear so i bought 2,3 to be in place of 1 series for travel, and 5 series Gitzo i use always for my normal shooting in my country everywhere, it is my best tripod ever, and i was using Manfrotto 190XPROB with my medium formats [except the digital one] because i didn't have plates to use with my ballhead, but i bought almost all the plates i need to use with my ballhead on Gitzo so soon i will get rid of my Manfrotto tripod.