Canon A650 flare problem?

Hello,

I've recently got a Canon A650, and I find that the flare it gives is considerably higher than the A610 or A630 that I had before. See the attached image - the flare on the upper right of the image comes no matter what the aperture opening, and even in the movies, so it's lens related (too little coating?). Is anyone else noticing this level of flare or do I have a defective camera? It's really annoying to see this flare after being used to not seeing it on the A610 and A630.

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Given all the intense light sources in the example image, flare's not too surprising, although I had to look really hard to see it in your posted example. A high ISO setting and long exposure will also make flare more visible, so unless you were in exactly the same conditions with all three cameras, it's not really easy to directly compare their performance.

That's just an example shot... pretty much every night shot I've taken is similar in having flare from lights on the opposite side of the frame, which didn't happen on the A610 or A630 at all... I've looked through my library of pictures with both cameras and I have ones with the similar ISO (80), aperture (3.5) and exposure length (1 sec.) and NONE show such flaring while ALL of my A650 shots do. That's what's making me wonder.