The article presents an experimental proof that it is possible to implement relief-phase recording of holographic information using an optical registration scheme in counter-propagating beams. Previously, this was done only for positive photoresists having a sensitivity three orders of magnitude lower than that of silver-halide photographic emulsion with other advantages. It has been experimentally shown that the key operations of photochemical processing of silver halide photographic emulsions are short-wavelength UV irradiation of photographic plates with a mercury lamp (λ < 250 nm) and their subsequent short-term (10 s) etching in glacial acetic acid. The mechanisms of surface relief formation in different ranges of recorded spatial frequencies were analyzed, and significant positive differences in the properties of relief-phase structures on silver halide photographic emulsions were shown compared to their counterparts recorded on photoresist.