Resizing photos cause long delay while document updates

I use numbers to record data when I undertake a survey of a property. While most of what I record is text and numbers, I use the spreadsheet structure to keep photos too. Each sheet has 12 cells for photos but I don't always use them all. Each document can have up to 30 sheets and again I don't always use them all. Here's an example of what I mean.

Never really had much of an issue before, even when I was approaching 12 photos on all 30 sheets.

I'm now doing my first survey after updating to Big Sur and I'm finding that resizing the photos in a cell using the 'original size' option is causing beach balling while the spreadsheet updates. (it says "spreadsheet updating")

This is with photos from my iPhone 12. If I crop the photos first so they are smaller, I don't encounter this problem.

Is anyone else noticing this problem?