  We present preliminary results from surface photometry of a sample of
early-type galaxies observed with NICMOS on board HST in the F160W (H-band)
filter. Dust is found to occur mostly in galaxies which possess unresolved
nuclei, and in a few cases the presence of dust causes the isophotes to appear
boxy. We performed a 2-D modeling of the host galaxy light distribution using
the empirical Nuker function, which proves to be an adequate representation of
the surface-brightness profile for most early-type galaxies. The accurate
modeling of the bulge light allows us to obtain the magnitude of the unresolved
central source without contamination from the underlying stellar population.
Our classification of early-type galaxies into core-type and power-law galaxies
agrees with the results from previous work based on HST optical images, with
core profiles occurring in luminous galaxies and power-law profiles occurring
in low-luminosity galaxies with disky isophotes. We do not find a clear
dichotomy in the distribution of inner slopes. Unresolved nuclear point sources
are evident in about one-third of the sample galaxies, with H magnitudes in the
range 13.5 to 17.3. Most of the type 1 Seyfert and LINER nuclei (83%) reveal a
distinct point source, while the detection rate is much less for type 2 nuclei
(35%). The occurrence of point sources appears to be independent of whether the
underlying galaxy has core-type profile or power-law profile.
