No. I'm sorry you assumed that. I was just answering the question.
Okay, David, thanks for that. Sometimes a bad experience with a particular model can make a person flush a whole product line down the tubes, but for macro work I can assure you the Giottos MT-8361 is a great tripod:
As sturdy as the Gitzo 3540 is, it could never contort to such a position as above, and so would be useless for my intended application. The Giottos has a unique feature where the center column comes out, and is able to be re-inserted into a central axis point to achieve a wide variety of angles ... and can be pulled-out farther or pushed-in deeper to achieve a wide variety of extensions ... as needed to achieve the perfect focal distance for macro work.
As Bronislaus Janulis pointed out, some of the Giottos are in fact quite sturdy, and as you can see above my model has no problem supporting a modest equipment weight, at nearly ground level, suspended about a foot out from the center. To make this possible, the Giottos legs widen to the extent it actually "flattens" the whole tripod framework.
Jon mentions a newer (and also flimsier) Gitzo model now achieves this same kind of contortionist work for macro, but I do believe it was Giottos who pioneered these unique (and quite useful) features. I for one couldn't be more pleased with mine. BTW: The subject of my photo was this little guy right here:
Anyway, I don't want to deviate from the topic too much, as I too am rubbing my chin about adding the Gitzo tripod legs for landscape work later on in the year. I just wanted to correct some (what I perceived to be) misinformation as to the Giottos tripod legs, as they are simply wonderful for arguably a wider range of applications that any kind of standard legs and they can support modest equipment weight just fine.
Jack