These S mode shots at different heights. At 49" the GT3541LS has about 6" of its 4th section extended. At 43.75" the 4th section is fully retracted.

The GT3541LS shows some improvement with the 4th section fully retracted. The TVC-33 shows no benefit from the shorter height, in this case extending the bottom 3rd section less so.

Very interestingly, the G1410 shows tremendous improvement at 43.75". This 3 section tripod extends to 64" and has little of it's 3rd section extended at 43.75". It would be interesting to reproduce this test to see if the results are consistent.

The idea behind this comparison was to try as best possible the impact of the 4th section on the GT3541LS. However, the G1410 results clearly illustrate that any tripod, even a 3 section, can benefit from reducing height a bit. This illustrates the danger of reading too much into the GT3541LS performance here in the context of 3 vs 4 section performance. A better test would require the 3 section GT3530LS, unavailable to me for testing.