We present new accurate CCD uvby light curves for the LMC eclipsing binaries HV982 and HV12578 , and for the SMC systems HV1433 and HV11284 obtained at the Danish 1.5m telescope at ESO , La Silla .
The light curves were derived from DoPHOT photometry , and typical accuracies are between 0.007 and 0.012 mag per point .
Standard uvby indices have also been established for each binary , primarily for determination of interstellar reddening and absorption .
For HV982 and HV12578 , accurate photometric elements have been established .
Both systems consist of two detached components of comparable sizes in an eccentric orbit .
Adopting the spectroscopic elements given by Fitzpatrick et al .
( [ 2002 ] ) for HV982 , we derive absolute dimensions of its components which agree well with their results .
A distance modulus of V _ { 0 } - M _ { V } = 18.63 \pm 0.08 is obtained , corresponding to a distance of 52.6 \pm 2.0 kpc , which is in formal agreement with ( although slightly larger than ) their determination .
HV1433 and HV11284 both consist of two rather close , deformed and quite different stars .
As the mass ratios between the components ( and their rotation rates ) are not known , definitive photometric elements can not yet be obtained , but we present a sample of possible photometric solutions .
In a series of forthcoming papers we will combine our uvby observations with high-dispersion spectra from the UVES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope ( VLT ) and present absolute dimensions , chemical abundances and distances for selected LMC and SMC systems , including HV12578 and refined results for HV982 .