This paper describes a small, low power SEC vidicon camera developed for recording images of the outer solar corona from an OSO satellite. The SEC vidicon has been selected for this application because of its capability to integrate and store low light level and low contrast images. The achieved signal to noise ratio will be discussed and compared with theoretical considerations. A new operational method to readout the tube very slowly will be described. The influence of a zero order data compression scheme on the quality of the coronal images will be discussed.