  We quantify the effects of Galactic extinction on the derived luminosity and
diameter functions and on the density field of a redshift sample. Galaxy
magnitudes are more affected by extinction than are diameters, although the
effect on the latter is more variable from galaxy to galaxy, making it more
difficult to quantify. We develop a maximum-likelihood approach to correct the
luminosity function, the diameter function and the density field for extinction
effects. The effects of random and systematic photometric errors are also
investigated. The derived density field is robust to both random and systematic
magnitude errors as long as these are uncorrelated with position on the sky,
since biases in the derived selection function and number counts tend to cancel
one another. Extinction-corrected luminosity and diameter functions are derived
for several subsamples of the {\it Optical Redshift Survey} (ORS). Extinction
corrections for the diameter-limited subsamples are found to be unreliable,
possibly due to the superposition of random and systematic errors. The ORS
subsamples are combined using overall density scaling factors from a full-sky
redshift survey of \iras\ galaxies, allowing the reconstruction of the optical
galaxy density field over most of the sky to 8000 \kms.
