How do I get a brighter DNA bands
I normally use 1-2 ul (depending on whether my gut tells me I have a lot of DNA, or a little that day) in a 70 ml 1% gel (which is probably 60-65 ml after boiling in the microwave). I have no trouble whatsoever seeing ladders and DNA samples of down to 100 ug in wells not much bigger than about 4 mm.

Here are the factors that you can manipulate to alter the brightness:


Amount of EtBr. More is brighter. (However, you already use a lot - using less may even be better because it would reduce background while still saturating the DNA with EtBr)
Amount of DNA. More is brighter. To avoid guesswork, use a ladder and consult the instructions in its manual or spec sheet. They usually have an example picture of a gel, and say exactly how they obtained it.
You messed up. Do other people in the lab get good gels? Ask them to do the protocol with you.
Sample preparation. Are you using a loading dye in the correct amount? Is the DNA diffusing out of the wells? Are you spilling a lot of it when you load?
Band width. Obviously if you load the same amount of DNA in a well 4 times as wide, it will be 4 times fainter.
Strength of UV light. Many illuminators have a knob to adjust the intensity, people turn it down to avoid damaging DNA when gel-purifying restriction fragments. You can also play with intensity, gamma and exposure in a geldoc machine.
Quality of EtBr. I've never actually had this happen, but your stock may be bad for some reason. Ask another lab for a ul or two to easily control for this.
Quality of DNA. Obviously, your sample must actually have DNA in it, and not be degraded. You can check amount and purity easily with a spectrophotometer, but it will not tell you if the DNA has been digested into its component nucleotides (that is usually checked with a gel).
Amount of gel. The crucial variable is obviously not total amount of EtBr, but concentration. Less gel, brighter bands - but you seem to be using a standard gel amount.
Quality of gel. Again, never had this happen, but try making the gel with someone else's reagents.


I can see that you have a ladder in the middle, so at least some DNA is definitely there.

Also, keep in mind that off-the-shelf cameras are not good at imaging the EtBr fluorescence, because the wavelength is a bit unusual. The nice pictures you see in papers are taken with a specialized geldoc machine or a camera with an appropriate filter.