I have it in Object mode, positioned it as I wanted it, hit ctrl alt numpad 0 and… the view suddenly points out into the ether, in no way related to where I aligned it.
I’m obviously missing something fundamental here, thanks for helping.
I do not have clear explanation to this phenomena, however most of the times camera gets further ‘through’ the object which was in view before.
I usually “back” it immediately by G, middle click and move mouse. That moves camera on local Z and framing is still there when camera is back on the right side.
Have you set another object to be the active camera ? Any object can be a camera, not just the camera object.
Ensure the camera object is the active camera by selecting it and use the File / Cameras / Set Active Object as Camera