Hi, everyone. Ever the control freak, I'm holding off on buying a tripod because I'm being picky when it comes to fluid heads. My big gripe with the run-of-the-mill heads is that when they tilt, they don't do so around the sensor, but rather quite a bit below it. This causes a shift between objects that are different distances from the camera.

I realize that to some, this doesn't matter, but for me personally, having the head pan and tilt around the center of the sensor imparts a special controlled look that I love.

The type of head most known for doing this successfully in filmmaking would be geared heads. Unfortunately, these are incredibly expensive and unnecessarily large (particularly for a DSLR setup).

The only other type of head that I could find that would even be capable of doing this is a gimbal. Vari-Zoom makes a video gimbal called the ZeroGravity, but the issue with this and other gimbal heads is a lack of counterbalance. Gimbal heads are designed under the assumption that the user will position the camera setup at its center of mass, therefore negating the need for counterbalance. Would it be possible to outfit a gimbal in such a way that it could align the camera's center of mass with the center of the sensor?

Does anyone know any other head types that would work in a similar fashion? Gimbal heads right now seem to be the best option, but I wonder first why nobody has created one with counterbalance, and secondly, why there are no geared gimbal heads available.