  IceCube is a cubic-kilometer scale neutrino telescope located at the
geographic South Pole. The detector utilizes the extremely transparent
Antarctic ice as a medium for detecting Cherenkov radiation from neutrino
interactions. As a result of extensive studies of the optical properties of
ice, the light propagation in IceCube is well understood. The ice properties
are, however, still dominant sources of detector systematic uncertainties in
many IceCube analyses. We have designed a camera system to measure the optical
properties of the Antarctic ice surrounding the SPICEcore hole that is an
ice-core hole drilled down to 1.7~km near the IceCube detector. The device uses
CMOS image sensors to measure the back-scattered light from bright LEDs
pointing into the ice. Having a similar measurement principle, the device can
also serve as a proof of concept of a camera system designed for the optical
modules for IceCube Upgrade. During the 2018/2019 austral summer season, a
prototype of the instrument was deployed in the ice-core hole. In this
contribution, we present the hardware design of the camera system and the
result of the first deployment at the South Pole.
