Pretty freaking awesome! That storm was incredible!!

Those are very cool shots amigo: were these taken in Atas?

As for the shooting options you used, I'd actually suggest (in this case) leaving the f-stop as wide open as possible (to get as much light as possible as well as widen the depth-of-field, giving you better focus), but upping your ISO considerably. Noise wouldn't cause much of an issue in these shots, and the higher the ISO the more sensitivity you get, which would probably help a lot. It would also allow to use a *quicker* shutter speed, which sounds counter-intuitive, but since you were trying to shoot lightning (dynamic subjects) a long shutter speed may have caused a lot of the blur you're seeing.

Just thought I'd inject my $0.02, since I've been playing with similar photography lately myself! Hope things are well buddy!

They were indeed.

Point taken about the F-stop -- had my wits been about me (hey, it was late and I was tired), I probably would've experimented with that a bit more, but oh well.

I didn't want to use a higher ISO, though, because it makes it more grainy, and I think the increased light sensitivity would lead to increased glare -- the lightning is plenty bright to show up clearly on even lower ISO settings.

In the larger (uncropped image), the blurring looked uniform (so I doubt it was wind/subject movement), and since the cam was on a tripod, I don't think it was moving too much. The only other thing I can think it would be is incorrect focus (which it very easily could have been, since I was using the focus-by-faith method ;) ).

Not sure, though. Really just have to try it and see. Maybe I'll experiment with some more night shots this weekend. Thanks for the tips!