Becoming a NIR-sensitive aerial archaeologist

For various reasons, aerial archaeologists use(d) film when studying their objects in the Near InfraRed (NIR). However, even the use of colour InfraRed (CIR) emulsions remained severely restricted till today due to some ignorance or a severe lack of knowledge about the subject and - not at least - the critical imaging process. This error-prone film-based workflow belongs now to the past, thanks to the advent of digital cameras. In this article, two new approaches will be outlined, both in an attempt to overcome the constraints on the common archaeological interpretation of varying visible colours in vegetation: the use of modified hand-held digital cameras to photograph the NIR spectrum on the one hand, as well as future plans to digitally capture both Red and NIR wavelengths simultaneously on the other. Besides additional technical background information on NIR photography, the paper treats the advantages (and disadvantages) of NIR to normal archaeological aerial imaging. In the end, an introduction of a new, remotely controlled system to support (aerial) archaeologists in their (NIR) photography is given together with several approaches to NIR image processing.