Johanna - what's the make of your new lens? I think I mentioned before that most lenses that require a collar will come with it or have it as an option. The problem with collars is that they fit onto different areas of a lens depending on the design, so there's no "one-size-fits-all" type of tripod collar that you can buy to just snap on a lens. As for the filters, again, it depends on lens. Let me know which one you bought and we can figure it out. As for a tripod, that's one of those things in life that you actually get what you pay for. If you buy a cheap tripod, you will regret it, especially if you're putting a larger camera on it. You ideally want zero motion of the camera when using your tripod. That's not just when the camera is sitting on top of it, but also when you're looking through the viewfinder and pressing the shutter button. While you can use a $20 tripod, you're more than likely going to wind up paying for it with motion blur in your images (especially at longer focal lengths). Most of those manufacturers (like Slik and Impact) keep the costs down on their low-end products by using cheap plastic. Not very stable and not very sturdy (I know at least 2 people who dropped their Slik's and cracked parts in the tripod). If you can't go with a beefier tripod (like a Bogen/Manfrotto - good, solid, all metal tripod and head for around $100 that will last you probably 10+ years or your lifetime if you take care of it), then I'd suggest at least going to a higher end of the cheaper ones. I don't know the current model numbers, but something like the Slik U9000 that I've seen for $50-60 would probably be better than a $20 Walmart one. -=>Donald