The invention discloses a camera state acquisition method, a camera and a camera system, and belongs to the field of monitoring. The method comprises the following steps: sending a state acquisition instruction to a surrounding camera, wherein the state acquisition instruction is used for indicating the surrounding camera to acquire state information of the surrounding camera, and sending the acquired state information to a central camera; receiving the state information sent by the surrounding camera; and sending a state information set to a cloud server, wherein the state information set comprises the received state information. According to the camera state acquisition method disclosed by the invention, the state information of the surrounding camera is acquired by the central camera ofthe camera system, and the state information is sent to the cloud server, so that a technician can acquire the state information of the camera in the camera system by accessing the cloud server, in this way, the technician does not need to perform an operation in the vicinity of each camera while detecting the state of the cameras, so that the maintenance cost of the camera is reduced.