Rainbow lens flare – TS-E 24L II

Has anybody come across this before? Shooting into the sun with my new upgraded 24 TS-E there is none of the regular flare, or loss of contrast like I had with the Mark I, BUT there is this strange "laser rainbow" like flare (very small, the image is a 100% crop). Not sure if I should be concerned. . .

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Weird.

Never seen that with my TS-E 17mm yet.

Water drop on the lens?
Is it reproducible?

Hmm, might actually be a characteristic of the SWC coating? See http://www.luminous-landscape.com/1photo-pages/17-flare.shtml - the flare spots of the new SWC lenses seems to be very small and well-controlled.

Perhaps your front element got nicked? The good news is that you can easily clone it out.

I was thinking something on the lens element as well. Maybe a small drop of water or something? Give it a good cleaning and see if it still happens.

Thanks everyone. I will try to reproduce the flare and I'll double check that nothing is on the front element.

Check the rear element also.

I checked the front and rear elements, they are perfectly fine. I tried shooting at all sorts of angles into the sun, and I can barely even get the lens to flare, let alone do what it did before. When there is flare it does show a bit of rainbow colour, but not nearly as concentrated as that. So I think there may have been some sort of interaction between a water droplet in the air and the sun (it was raining nearby, so a rogue drop is not unlikely). I'll keep my eyes open for the same effect again, but I'm not going to worry about it.

I think it's normal in certain situations.
Last night I saw a tvshow with a few seconds of the exact same rainbowflare as your example

Seems to be nothing to worry about at all.