It is our goal to become the preeminent source of information and education in large format digital imaging and printing. FLAAR is a non-profit educational organization founded by Nicholas Hellmuth and dedicated to large format photography of the ancient art and architecture of Latin America. This purpose evolved into the following activities based upon the technology used to carry out FLAAR's initial mission:

-Evaluation of large format printers, scanners, and high resolution digital cameras.
-Education in this technology

-In-depth, down-loadable reports on technology in Adobe PDF format
-Articles in leading trade publications
-Presentations at major trade shows, world-wide.

-International consulting
-Market feedback to manufacturers

The technologies receiving primary focus by FLAAR involve very high resolution digital imaging. FLAAR has performed a tremendous amount of research within the fields:

-Fine Art Giclee printing processes
-UV-Curable Ink Flatbed Printers
-Solvent and Eco-solvent inkjet printers
-Wide-Format Inkjet Printers

FLAAR has performed research on laminators and some laser printers. There is also research with scanning technology as FLAAR continues the archiving project of Dr. Hellmuth's extensive Mayan photo collection.

FLAAR would love to answer every question that comes to us from our readers; however our staff is limited and there are only so many hours in a day to perform research needed to keep the reports current with the industry. At this time our main focus is UV flat-bed printers, Fine Art Giclee, Solvent and Eco-solvent, and Wide Format Inkjet. These industries are developing rapidly and FLAAR wants to ensure our readers get the most up-to-date information possible. FLAAR hopes to return to our other areas of focus (scanners, laser printers, laminators, etc) in the coming future.

Please continue to e-mail us with areas in the industry you want to learn more about. FLAAR does take the time to consider new areas of study based on reader's suggestions.

Our work in digital imaging is to enable FLAAR to be a pre-eminate resource for museums, universities, schools, and individuals to be able to understand which digital imaging technology can assist them in their business. Here is Dr Hellmuth in the Durst headquarters in Europe, evaluating UV-curing technology as a new and improved manner of printing large images. These test photographs result from FLAAR evaluations of advanced digital cameras such as the 22-megapixel Phase One P25+ and the 48-megapixel BetterLight.

Here is the Epson 9880 printing in black and white. It was so expensive to switch the photo black to matte black that the image came out poorly. So we moved to an HP Z3100 and printed the same photo with matte black. With the HP Z3100 it switches automatically--no wasted ink. If we had an Epson 9880 ourselves we could have one with matte black and get better results for our reviews. But what you see is what we actually got on the Epson we borrowed for a day. To really find the good features we would need this printer in-house. We have an HP Z3100 in-house for long-term evaluation and it did much better on the black-and-white photograph.