Tripod Rage

I came really close to throwing my tripod in the ocean this morning. I have a Manfrotto 390 Junior tripod with integrated pan and tilt head. It was a pretty good buy at the price I paid but I have come to realise that it is not quite stable enough for my needs. More importantly the head is virtually impossible to position and lock accurately, which is why it nearly ended up in the ocean today. I was trying to take some close-up shots of a piece of seaweed and everytime I tried to lock the tripod at the elevation I wanted there would be just enough play for it to drop to just below what I wanted. So it was a fight to guess how much too high to set the elevation to cater for this. So I think that my next photographic purchase will be a better tripod and a good ball head.