Reddit mentions of Edu-Toys Slide Making Kit

Thanks for the reply! I'll be looking mostly for bacteria/fungal hyphae/protozoa. Might try to throw the occasional bit of molding mulch, plant matter, trichome, dead bug, etc under there too and see if I can't take a cool pic.

What's the cheapest way I could conduct some decent science here? Epifluorescence microscopes are way out of my price range. I'm looking for the best sub-$150 USB microscope I can find (I should have specified a price range, sorry). You don't think I'll be able to count bacteria in a snapshot on my computer from a brightfield microscope (especially if I use a stain and get the layer of water thin enough that they don't drift in and out of focus too badly)?

Here's a video at 600x magnification with bacteria pretty visible in what seems like a brightfield microscope. This is sort of what I'm going for--any advice on sub-$150 USB microscopes for something like that? Even if the method isn't perfect, as long as it's consistent, I can get some science done (I only care about comparing bacterial populations, not about accurately counting the absolute number, just seeing if certain techniques increase/decrease them comparatively to others). What do you think?

As for filtering, that's a great idea, I can see how that would be important for getting consistent results. I'll probably mix a gram of soil with a known volume of distilled water for each sample, pass it through a coffee filter to simply get rid of sand/silt/clay, stain it, take a few pics at different locations, and get an average value. As for stains, is there anything you could recommend within my budget? Or could I just get a cheapo kit to start off with? Something like this