- turn of the grid, sometimes this helps
-select the object in question and then go to on of the orthographic views sometimes maya zooms way out for no apparent reason(to my knowledge)
- you can make 2 polyplanes, rotate them so that they match up with the front and side view and assign the refferrence images as textures on the colorchannel.
This way you don't have to leave the perspective view ever again because in the upper right corner there's a thingy that points to the 3 axis if you click on 1 of the axis it will go to that orthographic view.
And delete the imageplanes in the hypershade
Good luck