Maclaw,
I'm not sure of your current status on the camera, but I have a suggestion just in case it can help you.
If you can manage to compile a working libcamera on CM7.2, then you can use it in conjunction with the camerahal (closer to rapmv78's generic version, not the version you're modifying to support Samsung's API). This is what I have done for my ICS port on the galaxy5. See:
https://github.com/psyke83/android_device_samsung_galaxy5/tree/ics/libcamera
Camera & barcode scanning is working on my port, and video recording will record, but the resulting video file will be corrupted (may be due to missing OMX codecs).
I am aware that no other Samsung msm7x27 port uses libcamera built from source for CM7.2, but the problem may be due to an incompatibility in the proprietary liboemcamera.so from Gingerbread ROMs. Perhaps if you try a Froyo version of this library for your device, you can get the open libcamera (and therefore, the cameraHal) working.