Formaldehyde is an excellent tracer for the early phase of ignition of hydrocarbon fuels. It appears in high concentrations and can easily be detected using laser-induced fluorescence (LIF). However, the determination of concentrations fields from LIF is difficult because of quenching and radiationless energy transfer processes. In addition, reference measurements are challenging at least at elevated temperatures and pressures since defined formaldehyde concentrations are difficult to prepare. We describe three set-ups for preparation of formaldehyde/air mixtures. Therefore, we used a set-up for vacuum pressures, a steady state formaldehyde/air flow regime as well as a novel concept for fast gas heating via SF6 (chemically inert gas) using a TEA CO2 laser. An admixture of CO2 was used for temperature measurement in this case. The applicability of the fast laser heating system has been demonstrated with gas mixtures of SF6 + air, SF6 + N2, as well as SF6 + N2 + CO2 at 1 bar total pressure. In addition, we used the steady state formaldehyde/air gas flow system to measure new pressure dependent formaldehyde LIF excitation spectra in the 343 nm spectral region (414 absorption band of formaldehyde).