Camera starts underground

I'm working on creating a character model using maya. My problem is that I can't seem to get the camera to work properly. When the mission starts, the camera is partially underground looking up at the model. (using 3rd person) When I move the camera around, most of it looks fine, but it lets me rotate the camera so that it is actually looking up from under the character, and it goes through the ground to get there.

I tried moving the cam node to various positions, but it doesnt seem to affect anything. Should it? It is just a cam node as created by the maya exporter, when you tell it to create from the menu. Cam is on my always export list, so it is exporting. What am I doing wrong? Or, is there some way to limit the range of motion of the camera, so that it can only rotate a certain number of degrees, or set a start angle?

Thanks!