How to improve your microscopy

There's no doubt that microscope optics are important in forming a good image, and if you're going to record the output as a photo or a video, then the capture system and linking optics are important too.  However, I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the lighting is as important as the above.  It doesn't matter if you're using a fancy microscope and an expensive camera or a cheap microscope and holding your mobile phone to the eyepiece to take photos, if the lighting is working against you, then you're going to struggle. Like many people I've been using Ikea Jansjo LED lamps for microscopy. They're relatively cheap and they work OK, but it wasn't until I bought a Brunel Microscopes Dual Flexilite LED unit recently that my eyes were opened:



Using exactly the same optics, the quality of the images I can produce with my kit has improved 10-fold. Here's Dismodicus bifrons, a 2mm-long spider:



And here's the epigyne from this specimen, which is approximately 0.1mm:



I've never been able to produce images this good before. What has changed? Not the optics - only the lighting.