All typical reactions. The perceived problems with this lens are only problems if you want them to be. Everybody does not have the same perceived problems. The elitist will never love a wide ranging do it all zoom lens in general and especially one that does not have f2.8 or f4 in the description. There is no use even discussing the merits.
I don't think it has anything to do with elitist behavior or thinking.
I myself use a 5x zoom in the form of the Z 24-120/4 S when the situation calls for it, if it's the better tool for the job due to its focal length flexibility.
In the context of OP, photo & video, travel, where a large focal length range is desired and lighting conditions are good, I can absolutely understand the advantages.
Photography is enormously diverse, and lenses are ultimately tools that help you realize your photographic and cinematic ideas and achieve the desired image effect.
In the end, it's all about choosing the right tool for the job.
Depending on the user and the task at hand, that might be a Z 28-400/4-8 if focal length versatility is paramount.
Factors such as light gathering qualities, which allow you to work with a much wider range of available light, the much greater creative freedom with DoF, and the last bit of image quality are secondary.
That's the price you pay for the immense focal length range of a 15x zoom.
For many photographic situations, in my opinion the majority, it is more important to choose a more specialized tool.
In many cases, a 15x zoom is not needed at all and does not offer any advantages, but the disadvantages remain for the job.
That's why I definitely see the great flexibility of such a superzoom lens when it's suited to the task at hand.
However, this only applies to a fraction of the photographic spectrum, which is why I find it rather elitist to postulate the Z 28-400/4-8 as the holy grail of versatility and shake your head when users with different profiles evaluate it differently.
In addition to the necessary capabilities and characteristics of a lens that are required for specific photographic tasks, it is also a matter of personal philosophy.
This may also be related to how and when one learned photography.
I started in the 1970s and still appreciate the reduction to a single focal length.
Situations where I deliberately set out with the mindset of a single focal length, for example a 35mm or 135mm prime.
At that moment, I consciously want to reduce and fully concentrate on the creative scope of this focal length.
I then think in this focal length and select the appropriate motifs; situations that would require a 100-400mm lens do not interest me at all at that moment.
I am then completely in the 35mm mindset and not looking for subjects in a focal length range of 28-400mm.
This is the opposite of the more widespread need today to be equipped for every occasion, city architecture, group portraits, but under no circumstances miss the pigeon or situation for which I need 200-400mm.
I also use vintage lenses from various decades that are visually inferior from today's perspective, M42 lenses from Carl Zeiss Jena or SMC Takumar, Tomioka, and others, including a 70-210/3.5 Vivitar Series 1 zoom lens, lenses from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Or Canon FD lenses from the 80s, including zooms such as the 20-35/3.5 L, or Mamiya 645 Sekor lenses from the 80s.
Many of them have greater optical flaws in terms of aberrations, flares, CA, and LoCA than a very good and modern superzoom lens such as the Z 24-400/4-8.
So that's not what it's about, but about choosing the right tool, the right look, rendering style for the photographic task at hand.
I can certainly see the enormous flexibility that such a superzoom offers for certain photographic/cinematic tasks, but I would resist selling it as a universal truth.
It doesn't apply to me, and probably not to many other users either, because the majority of my photographic excursions benefit more from other aspects than from a 15x focal length range in one lens.
This means that, with a few exceptions such as travel photography, videography, the supposed super flexibility remains largely unused, and then you're left with the disadvantages of such a superzoom solution.
The discussion was also fueled by the fact that people here shake their heads when you have a different photographic approach and don't see the same benefits of such a superzoom.
So it's not so much that we're being elitist and saying such a superzoom is not fancy and elitist enough, but rather that the superzoom faction in this thread cannot understand that there are users who generally do not need this immense focal length flexibility in one single zoom lens, and then, logically, the disadvantages of such a solution dominate if I do not need the point that everything is subordinate to a superzoom.
At that moment, the fast prime or fast, significantly shorter zoom solution gives me more flexibility for my tasks.
That was the actual core criticism, not that it is impossible to understand that it can be the ideal lens for some users and areas.
It was more that this opinion, which I and other users hold, is not accepted, and then the discussion is stifled with accusations of elitist thinking.
To be honest, I find the empathy of superzoom advocates for a different, more targeted approach lacking, rather than the other way around.
