Hi Coasting, I too shoot with a 7D. Great camera IMO, but I too am still figuring out how to use it. Once you get the photos going, then you can shoot some unreal video! My tips:
- shoot in camera raw
- shoot your pictures with custom WB at 10,000k (which you already figured out)
- to minimize blur, you need to have a high enough shutter speed to negate shake if taking shots hand held, or use a tripod. IMO shooting in manual mode and adjusting ISO, Aperature and Shutter speed independently is the way to go. Just remember the higher the ISO, the more noise you will get (the pic will look "grainy").
- it looks like you have a lens that is capable of great depth of field (i.e. a low f stop number), which means that the lens will allow a lot of light to hit the sensor when open, which IMO is good for aquarium shooting. You are all set there.
- play around and take a lot of shots. A realistic keeper to trash'er ratio IMO is somewhere between 1:10 and 1:20.
- you have to learn to use your post-processing software. No buts about it. With the 7D you would have gotten Digital Photo Professional, which is Canon's editing software. It is good, and easy to use, and you don't have to pay additional for it. When shooting in raw, you are essentially telling the camera to just store the raw info. When shooting in jpeg mode, the camera adds things like contrast, saturation, etc. automatically. I find the 7D raw settings to be really low on saturation - if you open a raw file in DPP, you will see the "sharpen" slider and "saturation" slider all the way to the left (0), and usually most RAW shots will require a bit of sharpening and colour adjustment. They look a bit dull, lack contrast, and have a hint of edge blur straight out of the camera.
- The beauty of shooting raw is correcting exposure and WB after you get the image on your computer. Use the WB "dropper" and move it over your image, and try and find a square that is roughly 18% grey. Click it. It will likely balance your image closer to what you are seeing realistically. If it didn't look right, undo, and try again with a different tone. Once you play around, you'll find it. The beauty is that when you do find it, you can then copy that setting to your other images, saving lots of time!
Here are a couple of recent shots I took with my 7D of my tank and a Sigma 30 mm 1.4 lens:
