Manfrotto 785b with a stronger ballhead from Sunpak installed. The tripod comes with a pistol grip ballhead that is nice, but not quite strong enough for an SLR. I believe it was part of why I dropped my camera off the tripod and broke my 50mm a couple of months ago.
The head that comes with the tripod does not remove, though. The center column I am using is from a $20 Sunpak tripod I bought at Best Buy. Since the column from the Sunpak was slightly less in diameter, I had to wrap a couple of layers of electrical tape around it so the column latch would hold. A more permanent and elegant solution is going to be the installation of some heat shrink tubing on the column. I have since added the heatshrink tubing, and it works great.
My first idea had been to cut off the original ballhead and JB weld this one in it's place, but this seems a more elegant solution. I can replace the ballhead if I like, and it leaves the original parts intact.
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