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Regarding tripods, for a stable setup the head choice has as much impact as the legs, potentially more. Even really cheap legs, like £50 or so, will take as much weight as most people will reasonably put on them, but if the heads no good it's just going to drop. The extra money in legs goes towards added features, less weight, and longer durability.
I've got a Giottos MTL 9361B, was a long time but I think I paid about £100 for it (was cheaper than the Manfrotto equivalent at the time, 055XPROB or 190XPROB) and the head was £50 for a Triopo NB-3S. The legs could hold up a small child no problem, I even rested my weight on them (probably around 50kg back then) but the head is the weak link. This one's rated at 12kg, I think in this image I probably had it loaded up to over 2kg off axis and it handled it easily, I don't have a setup any heavier than that .
So, for around £100 ($160) you could certainly have a setup that would handle pretty much anything you could stick on it if you had a low budget, just don't expect the legs to outlast you. Another £50 or so ($80) would get you some nice second hand legs (not necessarily even used, just not store bought) that will last longer and have some nice features.
