SanDisk announced increased capacities and speeds for its SanDisk Ultra II line. During a conference held at at the photo industry's PMA 08 International Convention, SanDisk introduced 32- and 16-gigabyte (GB) SDHC cards and an 8GB SDHC Plus card.

In a world in which camcorders and point-and-shoot digital cameras are getting increased high definition capabilities, SanDisk is trying to offer faster and bigger storage solutions.

According to SanDisk the new SDHC cards have read and write speeds of 15 megabytes per second, which is a 50 percent increase compared to previous models in UltraLine II, that had 10MB/sec read and 9MB/sec write capabilities.

The 32GB Ultra II SDHC card will be able to store more than 8,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 40 hours of video.

Also, the package of the 32GB and 16GB cards will include a SanDisk MicroMate USB 2.0 Reader, a $20 value, which will ease the transfer of the stored images.

“These mega-capacities in our SanDisk Ultra II line give users the worry-free ability to capture thousands of their memories and hours of HiDef video on a single card, while the faster write speed can reduce the time between shots and the faster read speed reduces time spent waiting to copy those images to a computer,” said Susan Park, senior product marketing manager for SanDisk Ultra II cards.

The photo and video enthusiasts will have to wait a little while, as the 16GB and 8GB cards are expected to be available worldwide in March. The 16GB card with reader will be sold for $179.99, while the 8GB SanDisk Ultra II SDHC Plus card has a suggested retail price of $99.99.

The customers who whish to boy the 32GB SanDisk Ultra II SDHC card with MicroMate USB 2.0 should wait until April. The price will be price of $349.99.