Abstract: A furnace throat monitoring camera monitors the throat of a blast furnace through an opening defined in a surrounding wall of the throat. The furnace throat monitoring camera includes a wide-angle lens system for producing an optical image representing a condition in the throat, a zoom lens system for varying a size of the optical image produced by the wide-angle lens system, and an imaging device for capturing the optical image varied in size by the zoom lens system. The zoom lens system and the imaging device can be tilted in unison with each other by a tilting unit to observe any area of the optical image produced by the wide-angle lens system.