Debian – Different console font sizes on two installations of debian wheezy

I have installed Debian Wheezy on two different partitions of the same desktop computer.

The first installation was done a few months ago with a version 7.5 iso image. The installation has been upgraded on a regular basis using apt-get.

The second was done one week ago with a 7.8 iso image. The installer detected the previous debian installation and set up grub to see both installations. Now I can boot into any of the two debian instances.

When using the older instance, the console boots with a relatively large font and after a few seconds switches to a smaller font.

When using the newer instance, the console boots with a large font and does not switch to the smaller one.

I would like to have the same behaviour on both installations, namely the smaller console fonts.

At first I thought it could be a grub problem but, since there is one grub managing all the boot configurations, I suppose the problem is in the configuration of Debian itself.
Next thing I looked at both /etc/default/console-setup but they are identical on the two systems.

So, why do the two systems use different console font sizes? Has the default changed between Wheezy 7.5 and 7.8? Or can it depend on packages that have been installed on one system but not on the other?

In any case, how can I find the font size used by the older system and set it on the new system?

EDIT

I just did a fresh install of Debian 8 on a free partition and I have the same problem: the fonts in the console mode are pretty large and stay like that. In previous installations of Debian 7 on many different machines (even a 12 year old laptop), the console starts with large fonts at boot, but then switches to smaller fonts before starting the X server. After that, when I switch to a console with ALT-F1-6, I get a console with small fonts.

In my current Debian 8 installation, on a new desktop, console fonts remain large.