Abstract: A combined bright field-dark field incident light apparatus 10 for a microscope instrument is described, in which in the dark field illumination the plane of the field diaphragm LF is projected into the object plane 25 via at least one intermediate image LF'. This comprises providing in the beam path at least three annular optical elements (19, 28, 29), arranged so that illuminating rays incident from a skew direction are also projected into the object plane 25. The form of the annular optical elements 19, 27 allows them to be assigned different optical properties at the same time.