The OpenTelemetry Collector image on DockerHub (the “contrib” image) is fine for getting started. It has everything you need.
After you’ve written your config and you know which receivers, processors, and exporters you use, then it’s time to use a Collector that has precisely those and no other components. There’s a tool for this, the collector-builder. It is hard to use, in my strong opinion, if you’re not comfortable in the Go ecosystem.
Martin Thwaites has a tool for this, and he shows how to use it on his blog:
