Don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but in both FSO and the Port, when using the external camera view (keypad decimal key) and then setting the Zoom level to a selected distance away from your ship using the keypad "+" or "-" keys, if you exit out of external camera mode by pressing the decimal key again (so your view is back to cockpit view) and then press the decimal key again (for external view), the zoom level goes back to full zoom in, forcing you to reset the zoom level out if you want the view farther away from your ship. I believe this behavior started around the release of v19.
In past versions of FSO (and Retail versions), if you chose external view and set your zoom level a specific distance from your ship and then went back to cockpit view and once again selected external view, the game would remember the previous zoom level and would stay at this level, no matter how many times you exited and entered external camera mode (unless you adjusted the zoom level again during the mission). In other words, whatever zoom level you set last would become the new "default" zoom level every time you toggled between external view and cockpit view.
Is there a reason why the game can no longer remember what the last zoom level was set to when using the external camera view? Were there new features implemented that are incompatible with this previous feature? Or was it removed for being deemed unimportant (or perhaps accidently removed while doing code cleaning)?