A lot of "street photographers" seem to work this way. There were a lot of rangefinder 35mm cameras made with iris shutters and 35mm focal length that are small and very quiet. I own an Olympus XA that would fit this bill. Has markings for hyperfocal settings, and can't be heard at all unless the area is dead silent to begin with.
Apart from the XA, the manual focus fixed-lens rangefinders with the convenient 35mm focal lenght were not many: the Yashica Electro-35 CC with a 35mm f/1.8 (but works in auto mode only) and Olympus Wide-S from the late fifties with a stunning 35mm f/2. A lot of good ones have a slightly longer focal lenght: the Konica Auto-S3 w. a 38mm f/1.8, the Canon GIII QL 17, the Minolta 7S-II, the Olympus 35 RD all w. a 40mm f/1.7, the older Minolta AL-S (Minoltina) w. a 40mm f1.8 and the Olympus SP w. a 42mm f/1.7 which may be the best lens of all these.
For those interested, as I have tried a few of these, here are a few more commentaries:
The Olmpus RD is a pain to use because of its hard to grip rings, on the other hand, the Canon GIII could probably be manipulated with thin gloves. The RD is also usually over $100, like the Konica S3.
The Minoltina is a small mechanical beauty (THE camera that started in 1964 the down-sizing of cameras). I have yet to test its optical quality. Cheapest of the lot on eBay, from $5 "don't know if it works" to $40 "everything works". Forget about the selenium meter, usually dead by the way. I would not even use the CDS meters on any of these cameras for slides; it's better to have your speeds checked by a technician and use the f/16 rule when sunny and a handheld meter otherwise.
The easiest to find and probably the best buy is the Canon. Its lens is very good but has more distorsion than Olympus 35/2 and 42/1.7. It is also a "GN" lens: a lens that closes to correct aperture according to focusing distance, as with some others of these cameras. BUT when using the dedicated Canonlite D flash, the camera knows what is the real Guide Number of the recharging flash (when charge is not complete but discharge available, the GN might be much lower).
For an overview of cheap ($60 to 120$) and sharp cameras suitable for travel, street and quiet photography:
http://cameraquest.com/com35s.htm
Who can live without one of these litle wonders?
Cheers,
Andre --
