1 Introduction

Cepheids are important standard candles in determining the extra-galactic distance scale. The results of the HIPPARCOS mission allow, in principle, a calibration of the period-luminosity relation based on the available parallaxes. [20, Feast & Catchpole (1997; hereafter FC)] did just that based on pre-released HIPPARCOS data of 223 Cepheids available to them at that time. Now that the full catalog has become available [18, (ESA 1997)] it is interesting to have a look at the final sample of Cepheids in the HIPPARCOS catalog. A second topic addressed here is I and JHK-band data. The analysis by FC was based on B and V data which was available for all stars in the sample of 220 stars their analysis was based on. However, the intrinsic spread in the M-P relation is smaller in I and JHK than in V (e.g. [39, Tanvir 1999;] [26, Gieren et al. 1998),] and so it might be interesting to collect data in these bands for further study.