Main-sequence fitting, also known as the photometric parallax method,<br /><br />
has long been used to estimate distances to individual stars and star<br /><br />
clusters beyond the limits of parallax studies. However, this approach<br /><br />
has been ultimately limited by the accuracy of the isochrones and<br /><br />
the availability of the cluster parameters like metallicity and<br /><br />
foreground reddening. In this talk I will report the recent effort to<br /><br />
improve the accuracy of isochrones by employing empirical corrections<br /><br />
to the color-temperature relations. I will show that the distances can<br /><br />
be estimated with 2-3% error using the empirically calibrated isochrones,<br /><br />
and metallicities with better than 0.1 dex.<br /><br />