I'm concerned that the old code had transform = "rotate() scale()" and the new code has transform = "scale() rotate()"

In general those do different things, so you'll need to convince me that this works in the same way.  Could it be that changing the origin to the center of the screen means it doesn't matter?

I don't know where this scale(-1,1) code came from but I've always thought that it was there to make the selfie camera work like a mirror rather than like a camera.  If so, then you'll want to check that it is still doing that.  

On the other hand, seeing the new getPhotoOrientation function below, I now wonder if this scale(-1,1) was a hack because we were supposed to rotate in the opposite direction for the selfie camera.