Shutter speeds and exposures explained

Working with fire is always challenging because I wanted to get enough light to capture the surrounding details, but not so much that the flames burn out ( literally ! ) So I need to expose to get the details in the flames. I've set the camera to Manual mode as AV mode always makes the images bright and burned out - even when underexposed ! I took different the ISO to 200 and tried a shutter speed I could handhold ( 1/160th ) and the exposure looked close enough.
I've included this out-take to show you what I mean by " blown out " images. The fire isnt exposed correctly, too much light was allowed into the lens and so the detail and texture in the flame is lost. It's a tricky balancing act - you want to have to enough light to make other elements in the image visible but you dont want so much light that the flames lose their detail. In this case the ISO is 400 and the shutter speed is 1/160th. In this instance, that is too much so the above version I reduced the ISO but at F1.2 I'm still going to get a good shutter speed in low light. For those of you on a budget, I recommend the Canon 85mm USM as it's a fantastic low light lens. You can take shots like this at higher F numbers, but you wont be getting the shutter speeds or low ISO's which a faster lens will give you. As far as composition goes, I'm just slightly above the level of the candles themselves and my focal point is the front candle holder. As for the editing, not so much.

1. Re-crop the image to get rid of some of the empty space on the left hand side.

2. Resize image to height 900 pixels x ???? <--- whatever it's proportion is.

3. Select " Sharpen " ( entire image, once ). Select " Sharpen edges " ( entire image, once ).

4. Go to " Shadows / highlights " and set highlights to +1 to give it a tiny but noticable little light boost.

5. Add a border.

Done !