Quote:
Originally Posted by nirofo
Benro was actually contracted to Gitzo up to about 2 years ago to manufacture their carbon fibre tripods and others. Benro pulled out of the deal and started to make it's own range of very similar tripods and actually improved on the design, the carbon fibre and the leg lock fittings. Initially the quality control wasn't as tight as Gitzo's, but now the latest models are up there with the top and easily match the Gitzo carbon range for quality and inovation. A lot of the bad reports that were going the rounds a couple of years ago were mainly sour grapes from people who were uptight about what they saw as Gitzo plagarism, the way I see it it can hardly be plagarism when Benro are selling a different but quality product at a third of the price of rip off Gitzo. Incidentally, Gitzo are now owned by Manfrotto and are manufactured in Italy.
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Depends where you hear the story as to quite what happened with the Benro/Gitzo deal... I have heard that rather than Benro pulling out of the deal, they were dropped by Gitzo as the CF legs they made were not up to the standard that Gitzo wanted. If the new Benro's really are as good as the Gitzos I'd like to try one, it woudl certainly save me a lot of money when buying my next tripod. It's a shame that there is nowhere local to me that stocks them or I'd take a look.