Glad you like the idea. I think it helps make things more immersive if the in-game advantage for the character matches an advantage the player gets.
Perhaps this could then be enhanced via questing to gain the ability to zoom.
I can see this work by gathering herbs for an NPC that uses magik, so they can give you a potion with the power of far-sight.
This could allow the camera view, mini-map and spyglass to now zoom.
A potential cool upgrade for that later on could be the power of remote-sight, where you can see from the eyes of a native creature, that you can first see from wherever you are. The internal mechanism would be just like shooting games where you have to lock on a visible target (I also suggest this as a handy coding lesson).
You could limit this to only effecting in the mini-map, or only for the camera view so it is not too over-powered, or limit the amount of times you can use it per level. Maybe later that could be linked to a Mana bar if you gain the ability to use Magik.
Going to test the hotfix version. I'll let you know how I get on.